Constructing Bronze Age lives : social reproduction and the construction and use of dolmen burials from the Yongdam complex in Jinan, southern Korea

The Korean Bronze Age is regarded as a time of great economic and social transformation, witnessing the emergence of social complexity in the peninsula. The dolmen burials of the region have been used to investigate, and indeed represent, this social change. This thesis looks beyond the typology and grave goods of the Korean dolmens to emphasise the actual practises of burial construction and use which were structured by the emergent material conditions of the dolmen architecture. The dolmen burials from seven Bronze Age cemeteries located in the Yongdam complex of Jinan, southern Korea, are analysed. The changing nature of burial practices is examined in order to consider the ways in which these dolmen burials actively contributed to the reproduction of life in the changing social and economic conditions of the late Early Bronze Age to Middle Bronze Age. It is proposed that, through these practices, a commitment to the `settlement community' was maintained in the late EBA, a `Songuggni way of life' was reproduced in the early MBA, and social differentiation was expressed and performed in the late MBA. This thesis presents an alternative interpretative approach which addresses the issue of how societies are maintained and recognises the crucial role of material culture in this process of social reproduction. It also further develops the notion that the `meaning' of the archaeological record should be found in the possibilities of practice and experience, as structured by the physical conditions of the archaeological material