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