What did they cook? A preliminary investigation into culinary practices and pottery use in the central part of the Korean peninsula during the mid to late Holocene

This study attempts to understand prehistoric human subsistence in Korean peninsula through the preliminary initiation of organic geochemical analyses on potsherds. While traditional approaches focus on reconstructing the ancient pot function or relative chronology, organic geochemical analyses on archaeological potteries endeavors to be precise about the types of food groups that were cooked or stored in a pot by attempting to identify the specific organic compounds trapped in the clay matrix. Since organic compounds are often preserved in direct association with archaeological pots, organic geochemical analyses have become an important method of investigation which archaeologists use to better understand the function of ceramic artifacts such as pottery and local diets. The sherd samples for the analyses in this paper were collected from the two prehistoric habitation sites located in the central part of the Korean peninsula: Kimpo-Yangchon site and Eupha-ri site. The main habitation period of the former is around 2800 BP (B. Kim et al. 2013), and the latter site was occupied around 1900 BP (H. Wang et al. 2013). We show that terrestrial animals are strongly represented in the organic residues, suggesting that views of a crop-dominated diet might need revision. Our results provide a critical clue to understand ancient subsistence of the central part of the Korean peninsula

Long-term chronology of subsistence and the role of intensive agriculture in the central part of the Korean peninsula during the Late Holocene

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2015The transition from foragers to farmers and the role of intensive rice agriculture have been among the most controversial subjects in Korean archaeology. However, the relatively high acidity of sediment in the Korean peninsula has made it impossible to examine faunal/floral remains directly for tracing the subsistence change. For this reason, many of the studies on the transition heavily relied on the shell middens in the coastal areas, which reflect only a small portion of the overall subsistence in the Korean Peninsula. The subsistence behaviors recorded in numerous large-scale inland habitation sites have been obscured by the overall separation between hunter-gatherer and intensive rice farmer. My dissertation research investigates the role of intensive rice farming as a subsistence strategy in the central part of the prehistoric Korean peninsula using organic geochemical analysis and luminescence dating on potsherds. The central hypothesis of this research is that there was a wide range of resource utilization along with rice farming around 3,400-2,600 BP. This hypothesis contrasts with prevailing rice based models, where climatically driven intensive rice agriculture from 3,400 BP is thought to be the dominant subsistence strategy that drove social complexity. This research focuses on four large-scale inland habitation sites that contain abundant pottery collections to evaluate the central hypothesis as well the prevailing rice-centered model. This research produced critical data for addressing prehistoric subsistence of Korean peninsula and established detailed chronology of subsistence during 3,400-1,800 BP

JIPA_supplementary_data

<p>Supplementary data of the paper for the Journal of Indo-Pacific Archaeology</p

Adaptations to sea level change and transitions to agriculture at Khao Toh Chong rockshelter, Peninsular Thailand

This study reports on an analysis of human adaptations to sea level changes in the tropical monsoonal environment of Peninsula Thailand. We excavated Khao Toh Chong rockshelter in Krabi and recorded archaeological deposits spanning the last 13,000 years. A suite of geoarchaeological methods suggest largely uninterrupted deposition, against a backdrop of geological data that show major changes in sea levels. Although there is a small assemblage of mostly undiagnostic ceramics and stone artefacts, there are some distinct changes in stone artefact technology and ceramic fabric. There is a substantial faunal assemblage, with changes in both the mammalian and shellfish taxa during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition that correlate with local sea level fluctuation. This assemblage provides an opportunity to explore subsistence behaviours leading up to the transition to the Neolithic. We explore the implications for current debates on the prehistoric origins of agricultural subsistence in mainland Southeast Asia. The data highlight the importance of local contingencies in understanding the mechanisms of change from foragers to agriculturalists

Hierarchies of engagement and understanding: community engagement during archaeological excavations at Khao Toh Chong rockshelter, Krabi, Thailand

In this chapter we present a case study showing an explicit strategy for local community engagement at an archaeological excavation in southern Thailand. We show how we tailored our approach to engagement to suit different sections of the local community. Our experience and strategies are probably familiar to many archaeologists working in the Southeast Asian region who have independently converged on similar approaches. We review the history of cultural heritage management in Thailand and show that while government policy has focussed resources on tourism at monumental sites, academic work has been most progressive in pioneering local community engagement at archaeological sites. Inspired by this progress, this chapter aims to provide a basic template for public engagement at various scales by explicitly documenting our strategies of local engagement at an excavation we conducted in Peninsular Thailand. We describe a model of understandings of archaeology that we found useful to strategise our engagement with the public. By providing this template we hope to make the process of promoting cultural engagement at archaeological excavations more effective and efficient for future projects