The residence is referred to as the leading of a human being's life within a given space or as the house for leading a life. The residential site is referred to as the remains left from a discarded house that had been the most fundamental living space...
The residence is referred to as the leading of a human being's life within a given space or as the house for leading a life. The residential site is referred to as the remains left from a discarded house that had been the most fundamental living space for any of the ancients. Being identified to have been existing on riverside alluvions or low hills, the residential sites of the Bronze Age were the houses in which the ancients in those days were leading their lives. As a residence, a pit of given length and width was dug out at a selected location within a settlement area and then its floor was flattened for use as a floor-surface. columns were erected at planned locations and they were covered with a roof, where the outside was blocked off with the roof and walls. Inside the residence, as needed for everyday life, such various facilities as the bare ground, pit-house, shelf facilities, storage pits, partition facilities, etc. were provided. The residence was a multi-purpose space where the aspects of life such as resting, cooking, sleeping, fabrication, storage, etc. were achieved on the basis of the said facilities.
Residential sites in the Bronze Age are divided largely into the two categories of (1) large residential sites of square-shaped, rectangular-shaped and slender-rectangular-shaped sites in the early period, and (2) small residential sites of square-shaped and circular-shaped sites in the later period. The layout of these sites either forms a line or makes a unit consisting of a group of several houses. Members in a residence are not those of a family but those of multiple households or of a community of generations.
The time range of this paper is the so-called 'the early and former period' which corresponds to the period between the start of the early period and the point of time just before the later period, whereas the spatial range is the Nam-River basin. As there are plenty of water and wide alluvions that have been formed since the old days at the Nam-River, lots of remains, especially of the Bronze Age, are being identified to have been existing around this river. The Nam-River basin is set to be a cultural area attracting attention to local studies being carrying out as focused on the water system.
In order to answer the question about how people lived in the Bronze Age, such aspects as where the ancients lived, how they built their houses, and how they utilized these houses have to be revealed before doing anything else. The first step to get the answer will be the restoration of residential sites. It is because of the fact that, being the place where almost all the aspects of life such as dwelling, fabrication, production, etc. were achieved, the residential sites will be the end result upon which the phases of the groups, times and societies in those days have been reflected the most.
In this paper, the study objective has been placed upon finding out the variations of the architectural structure and their meanings through using the method of residence restoration, and form-settings have been made according to both the column layout and the presence of columns/walls with regard to the residences in the early and former periods of the Bronze Age in the Nam-River basin. According to the layout of the main column, classification has been made as the Center Column 1, Column 2, Column 2 + Center column, a small number of columns whose peristyle is not identifiable with no standardized pattern, and those without any identifiable column pits internally. And then the wall columns have been classified in accordance with the presence of installations. Restoration of residences has been carried out by selecting the representative residences by type, and based upon the result, the layout of columns by type as well as the mimetic diagram of the upper structure have been presented.
Since the temporality of residential sites is not identifiable only with detailed types, the writer has attempted to make a period division based primarily upon earthenware patterns. This was made for the purpose of making a comparison between the time-points corresponding to those of epoch-making residential variations and the existing chronological recordings. Residential sites have been divided into 1-3 phases based on the period division, and the residential types and construction variations have been examined.
The phased variations of the residential sites in the early and former periods of the Bronze Age in the Nam-River basin may be summarized as follows: the first phase variations were seeking both the stability resulting from the presence of a central column and the efficiency of internal space. With the central role of the columns in two rows, the first phase residential sites were systematic with diverse types of residences from the planning stage. In installing the internal structures and facilities of a residence, opinions of the members were reflected. The second phase was the space utilization through variations in the width of residential sites while seeking the efficiency of constructing residences. The narrowed width of the residential sites facilitated the space division within the residential sites. Space division was made possible with a central column and wall-columns only and without any installations like the partition facilities of the first phase, which has been judged on the basis of multiple bare grounds. And as the scale became smaller, the efficiency in residence construction was being sought. The third phase is the simplification of residence construction. Regarding the residence construction, in view of the fact that, in such a residence, no wall-columns were existing to form the walls and that there was no internal central column from which the standardization of a residence could be identified, it can be said that the residence construction was made easier than in the previous phase. In addition, while the professional nature in residence construction can be said to have been deteriorated, self-sufficiency in residence construction is thought to have been made attainable because of the structural changes that could be put into practice more easily due to their non-professional nature.
In the early period, columns were arranged in such a way that the columns were sharing and supporting the weight. However, as time went by, such an arrangement was changing gradually so that they could eventualy support the whole weight. In the first phase, the upper weight was supported by two rows as well as two rows plus a central column, and in the second phase, it is supported primarily by the central row. In the third phase, columns were arranged in a non-peristyle way, which was a changed form of supporting the weight with columns that were erected according to the given situation rather than deliberately or intentionally. In the later period of the Bronze Age after the third phase (between end of former period and start of later period), the non-peristyle type column arrangement was changed to be the Songgukri-type residential sites that represent pit-houses and pits-with-two-columns internally. As such, the column arrangement in the early and former periods was changing from those with identifiable standardization in the early period to those with weakening directional nature later. Reaching the later period, the arrangement of the pit-with-two-columns emerged.
Changes in the early and former periods may be summarized as follows: the size of a residential site became smaller; in installation of structures and internal facilities, from diversification to simplification, and; in column arrangement, from strong emphasis to weak emphasis on standardization. The factors for the changes in residential sites can be affected by surrounding environment and mode of living, but they can be discovered from the external factors originating from the social atmosphere in those days.
Regarding the change in residential sites from diversified types to a common type, a social constraint with no allowance for anything else is assumed to have been existing. Regarding the change in residential life from a larger size to a smaller one, certain reasons for changing the community life or for converting the manpower for constructing and maintaining large-scale residential sites to other uses are assumed to have been existing.
Its evidence can be found out from the diffusion of rice farming among the cultural developments of Songgukri where its culture is not quite different from that in the time of small-scale residential sites. It can be seen that, as the rice farming became diffused, a large scale of arable land would have to be needed by those living in the Nam-River basin, and a lot of manpower would have to be spent for creating the agricultural fields. It is, therefore, thought that the construction of residences would have to take the form of independent self-sufficiency, and that, in order to do so, nothing but the simplification of the scale and type of residences could be done.
Within the changes that have been examined through the method for residence restoration, the social aspects in those days are contained. Methodologies for ravelling out the story have been targeted for recent relevant studies increasingly. With the achievement in accessing the residential sites from many different perspectives, a better restoration of the society in the Bronze Age may be expected to be made possible.