Population and social aggregation in the Neolithic Chulmun villages of Korea

This article reviews published excavation reports of the Chulmun settlements in South Korea and explores the changes in demographic structure over the period of ca. 8000-1500 BC. The Chulmun people were sedentary hunter-gatherer-fishers with an intensified use of marine resources, food storage, and a low level of plant cultivation. Archaeological evidence for social differentiation is very scarce in this period and social relationships are assumed to have been egalitarian. In an attempt to explain the lack of articulated social differentiation, this study examines settlement patterns to reveal considerable temporal variation. The number of settlements increased dramatically in 4000-3000 BC, presumably under the influence of plant cultivation and/or an intensified use of wild resources, but then decreased in 3000-1500 BC. Even at the zenith of the hypothetical population growth, most settlements were small scale with only a few pit houses and archaeological evidence for large population aggregation, which would have promoted interpersonal interactions, is rare. The uninterrupted presence of shell middens shows that coastal resources continued to be exploited until the end of the Chulmun period, while some sites were newly established in small remote islands. The current investigation suggests that although population growth occurred at one point, a number of interrelated factors, including a low level of aggregation and the subsequent population decrease and/or relocation, acted against the institutionalization of social inequality in the Chulmun period.