Neolithic Complex Hunter-Gatherers in Korea Revisitied

The present essay critically reviews the recent attempt to conceptualize the Neolithic society in Korea as complex hunter-gatherers. While large scale settlements with 20 to 30, and even 60 subterranean houses are well recognized in the Neolithic Korea, many archaeologists still consider that the occupants were mainly hunters and gatherers. The concept of complex hunter-gatherers were originally proposed to denote large village societies with prominent social hierarchies relying on abundant marine resources, and some archaeologists extended its use to prehistory. Aside from the archaeological applicability of the concept itself, the Korean Neolithic archaeological record lacks critical elements of the complex hunter-gatherers. While the discussion and application of the concept in the context of Korean Neolithic have opened the new theoretical landscape, it is true that many burials and associated goods, let alone habitations sites, do not suggest the development of social hierarchies. The characteristics of burial goods are consistent with sexual differences which is widely observable with most hunter-gatherers societies. Furthermore, many Korean Neolithic sites yielded evidence of broomcorn and foxtail millet domestication, which most archaeologists try to explain in the context of complementary subsistence activities still dominated by hunting and gathering. The existence of material evidence of plant domestication strongly suggests that the Neolithic people were not ‘typical’ hunter-gatherers, which begs further discussions of the role of domestication in the Neolithic and its implications to the development of settled village lives. While the concept of the complex hunter-gatherers was coined to embrace cases that do not fit into the traditional hunter-gatherer society, it has become another stereotype that does not allow wide range of variability in prehistoric societies. Rather, we need to pay more attention to the role of mixed economy or horticulture and dynamics of orderly egalitarian societies in the Neolithic Korea.