From Labour Control to Surplus Appropriation: Landscape Changes in the Neolithization of Southwestern Korea

Abstract

The transformation of sociopolitical landscapes during the Mumun period (1300–100 BC) in southwest Korea is evidenced by major shifts in monumentality, mortuary activities and storage practices. This transformation is argued to represent one of the final stages in an extended process of Korean Neolithization that began much earlier with the adoption of pottery by hunter-gatherers and later saw the adoption and intensification of agriculture, triggering the rise of new forms of power and ideology. Importantly, elite groups employed a range of strategies to mask and then legitimate growing social inequality, generating major changes in human–landscape relations.