Jeulmun pottery period

The Jeulmun pottery period is an archaeological era in Korean prehistory broadly spanning the period of 8000–1500 BC. This period subsumes the Mesolithic and Neolithic cultural stages in Korea, lasting ca. 8000–3500 BC ("Incipient" to "Early" phases) and 3500–1500 BC ("Middle" and "Late" phases), respectively. Because of the early presence of pottery, the entire period has also been subsumed under a broad label of "Korean Neolithic". The Jeulmun pottery period is named after the decorated pottery vessels that form a large part of the pottery assemblage consistently over the above period, especially 4000-2000 BC. Jeulmun (Hangul: 즐문, Hanja: 櫛文) means "Comb-patterned". A boom in the archaeological excavations of Jeulmun Period sites since the mid-1990s has increased knowledge about this important formative period in the prehistory of East Asia. The Jeulmun was a period of hunting, gathering, and small-scale cultivation of plants. Archaeologists sometimes refer to this life-style pattern as "broad-spectrum hunting-and-gathering". The origins of the Jeulmun are not well known, but raised-clay pattern Yunggimun pottery (융기문토기; Hanja: 隆起文土器) appear at southern sites such as Gosan-ni in Jeju-do Island and Ubong-ni on the seacoast in Ulsan. Some archaeologists describe this range of time as the "Incipient Jeulmun period" and suggest that the Gosan-ni pottery dates to 10,000 BCE. Samples of the pottery were radiocarbon dated, and although one result is consistent with the argument that pottery emerged at very early date (i.e. 10,180±65 BP [AA-38105]), other dates are somewhat later. If the earlier dating holds true, Yunggimun pottery from Gosan-ni would be, along with central and southern China, the Japanese Archipelago, and the Russian Far East, among a group of the oldest known pottery in world prehistory. Kuzmin suggests that more absolute dating is needed to gain a better perspective on this notion. The Early Jeulmun period (c. 6000-3500 BC) is characterized by deep-sea fishing, hunting, and small semi-permanent settlements with pit-houses.

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Related concepts (2)

Mumun pottery period

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.

Prehistory

Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared 5,000 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century.