Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 45 (1) 2017   DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2017.45.1.036-048

Annotation:  New Findings on the Middle Paleolithic of the Eastern Adriatic: The Earliest Settlement at Bioče, M Geomorphology and Quaternary Sediments at Archaeological Sites Near Anzhevka, Krasnoyarsk Territory Archaeological Sites as Markers of Hydrosystem Transformation in the Kurai and Chuya Basins, Southea Agricultural Practice on the Korean Peninsula Taking into Account the Origin of Rice Agriculture in Avtodrom 2—a Late Neolithic (Artyn Culture) Site in the Baraba Forest-Steppe, Western Siberia A Generalized Assessment of Cultural Changes at Stratified Sites: The Case of Chalcolithic Fortresse A Dugout from the Don River Exhibited at the State Historical Museum, Moscow: Discovery and Dating A House Model from Popudnya, Cucuteni-Tripolye Culture, Ukraine: A New Interpretation Old Turkic Statues from Apshiyakta, Central Altai: On Female Representations in Turkic Monumental Ar Early Medieval Armor from Southern Siberia Leather Artifacts from Tara, Western Siberia, Excavated in 2012–2014 The Morphology of Permanent Molars from the Paleolithic Layers of Denisova Cave An Anthropological Study of Mummified Remains from the Zeleny Yar Cemetery on the Lower Ob, Western Patterns of Growth and Development in Urban and Rural Children of the Northern Part of European Russ   

Agricultural Practice on the Korean Peninsula Taking
into Account the Origin of Rice Agriculture in Asia

Jaehoon Lee

University of Houston-Clear Lake, Campus Box 24, 2700 Bay Area Blvd., Houston, TX 77058, USA

Based on Carl Sauer’s hypothesis that agricultural activity may have first occurred around 6500 BP with the domestication of tropical plants, rice was long thought to have originated in Southeast Asia, where the climate is very warm and humid with plenty of rainfall. While the study of rice cultivation in Asia has been seriously undertaken because rice agriculture is associated with the origin and spread of pottery culture in the region, which is important in discussions regarding Northeast Asian population movements during the emergence of the Neolithic period, many new archaeological sites with evidence of older cultivated rice have been discovered throughout the 1980s and 1990s in China. Agricultural scientists now generally consider the middle-lower Yangtze River and Yunnan regions in China, which are actually farther north than Southeast Asia, as the cradle of the earliest rice cultivation. The dates and geographic location of rice cultivation were challenged even further after some carbonized rice hulls were excavated from the village of Sorori, in central South Korea. In this paper, some theoretical arguments related to the transition period from foraging to farming systems in Korean archaeology are introduced, and some arguments regarding the origin of rice, which is currently the most important crop for Northeast Asian peoples, are discussed. Based on a brief survey of research results, ecological conditions of Northeast Asia, the biological uniqueness of rice, and archaeological evidence for rice cultivation from the Sorori site in Korea, it is suggested that temporal and spatial frames for the early history of rice cultivation need to be expanded.

Keywords: Rice, Sorori, cultivation, farming.