Igeum-dong

Igeum-dong is a complex archaeological site located in Igeum-dong, Samcheonpo in Sacheon-si, South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea. This prehistoric archaeological site is important in Korean prehistory because it represents solid evidence that simple chiefdoms formed in as early as the Middle Mumun, some 950 years before the first state-level societies formed in Korea. The settlement is dated by pottery, pit-house types, and an AMS radiocarbon date to the Late Middle Mumun Pottery Period (c. 700–550 BC). Test excavations were conducted in 1997, and wide-scope horizontal excavations took place in 1998 and 1999. The site contains a megalithic cemetery with 63 burials, some of them with artifacts of high-status, 25 raised-floor buildings, including the two largest raised-floor buildings in Korean prehistory, 5 ditches, 1 palisade, and 27 pit-houses. The intra-site patterns show that the site is divided up into at least three ‘zones’: 1) mortuary, (2) feasting-meeting, and (3) residential. The megalithic cemetery is notable for a number of high-status burials and an interconnected series of low ‘pavement’ features made of rounded river cobbles that link the burials together. Individual megalithic burials were constructed with small cobble pavements in the vicinity of the grave, but through time a long line of burials became interconnected through these pavements. The pavement features themselves are thought to have functioned as ritual altars on which was placed fine red-burnished pottery and other offerings. The overall length of the excavated burials in the long, strung-out cemetery is some hundreds of metres and must have formed through numerous individual funerary events that took place over a number of generations. Some of the artifacts excavated from the cemetery include two rare Liaoning-style bronze daggers (Burial Nos. C-10 and D-4). Other burials yielded hundreds of large tubular greenstone ornaments, groundstone daggers, and finely made red-burnished pottery. The cemetery lies beside two long raised-floor buildings, Nos.