page_title: Mumun pottery period
section_title: Middle Mumun
hierarchical_section_title: Mumun pottery period / Chronology / Middle Mumun
caption_attribution_description: English: Pot from Bronze age, found in Jinju, Korea. Taken from the en:National Museum of Korea. English: Grande jarre globulaire polie du Mumun moyen, 7e siècle av. notre ère, site de Daepyeong. Jinju. Musée national de Corée, Séoul.
context_page_description: The Mumun pottery period is an archaeological era in Korean prehistory that dates to approximately 1500-300 BC This period is named after the Korean name for undecorated or plain cooking and storage vessels that form a large part of the pottery assemblage over the entire length of the period, but especially 850-550 BC.
  The Mumun period is known for the origins of intensive agriculture and complex societies in both the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Archipelago. This period or parts of it have sometimes been labelled as the "Korean Bronze Age", after Thomsen's 19th century three-age system classification of human prehistory. However, the application of such terminology in the Korean case is misleading since local bronze production did not occur until approximately the late 8th century BC at the earliest, bronze artifacts are rare, and the distribution of bronze is highly regionalized until after 300 BC. A boom in the archaeological excavations of Mumun Period sites since the mid-1990s has recently increased collective knowledge about this formative period in the prehistory of East Asia.
  The Mumun period is preceded by the Jeulmun Pottery Period.
context_section_description: The Middle (or Classic) Mumun (c. 850-550 BC) is characterized by intensive agriculture, as evidenced by the large and expansive dry-field remains (c. 32,500 square metres) recovered at Daepyeong, a sprawling settlement with several multiple ditch enclosures, hundreds of pit-houses, specialized production, and evidence of the presence of incipient elites and social competition. A number of wet-field features have been excavated in southern Korea, indicating that paddy field rice-farming was also practiced.
  Burials dating to the latter part of the Middle Mumun (c. 700-550 BC) contain a few high status mortuary offerings such as bronze artifacts. Bronze production probably began around this time in Southern Korea. Other high status burials contain greenstone (or jade) ornaments. A number of megalithic burials with deep shaft interments, substantial 'pavements' of rounded cobblestone, and prestige artifacts such as bronze daggers, jade, and red-burnished vessels were built in the vicinity of the southern coast in the Late Middle Mumun. High status megalithic burials and large raised-floor buildings at the Deokcheon-ni (Hangeul: 덕천리) and Igeum-dong sites in Gyeongsang Nam-do provide further evidence of the growth of social inequality and the existence of polities that were organized in ways that appear to be similar to simple "chiefdoms".
  Korean archaeologists sometimes refer to Middle Mumun culture as Songguk-ri Culture (Hanja: 松菊里 文化; Hangeul: 송국리 문화). Co-occurring artifacts and features that are grouped together as Songguk-ri Culture are found in settlement sites in the Hoseo and Honam regions of southeast Korea, but Songguk-ri Culture settlements are also found in western Yeongnam. Excavations have also revealed Songguk-ri settlements in the Ulsan and Gimhae areas. In 2005 archaeologists uncovered Songguk-ri Culture pit-houses at a site deep in the interior of Gangwon Province. The ultimate geographic reach of Songguk-ri Culture appears to have been Jeju Island and western Japan.
  Mumun culture is the beginning of a long-term tradition of rice-farming in Korea that links Mumun Culture with the present day, but evidence from the Early and Middle Mumun suggests that, although rice was grown, it was not the dominant crop. During the Mumun people grew millets, barley, wheat, legumes, and continued to hunt and fish.
caption: Large Middle Mumun (c. 8th century BC storage vessel unearthed from a pit-house in or near Daepyeong, H= c. 60-70 cm.
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