This study attempts to examine the various rituals in the Bronze Age with recent archeological evidences remaining until now, which are unfortunately rare. Since human being enter into the Agricultural era after the Neolithic Age. they are more likely...
This study attempts to examine the various rituals in the Bronze Age with recent archeological evidences remaining until now, which are unfortunately rare. Since human being enter into the Agricultural era after the Neolithic Age. they are more likely to depend on the environment of nature. As they improve their life style from the primitive status of just collecting plants on the mountain or attacking some vulnerable wildlife to the advanced status of growing and producing plants, they become to feel the need of proper environmental conditions. Therefore, they faced many difficulties far beyond their ability. They realized that they are helpless, furthermore the fear to the absolute power and reliance on that revealed two different ways, this concept of reverence came into being as a group behavior that showed religious and ceremonial meaning above individual level. As time passed, this formulated ceremony(의례) deeply settled itself in day-to-day life. So, it yielded various rituals through daily lives.
To understand religious rituals that affected much all their lives is a very important task to find out their thoughts. Practical and detailed picture of them including an ordinary and daily ritual held without any notion of its probability to be inherited can only be traced by fragmentary data remained today, with some exceptions like tomb that is intended to hand down to their descendants.
Many cases of excavations show very unusual status and style during the process of the research examining individual residences(개별주거지) or group residences(집락). Furthermore, excavated sites in here were intentionally broken or substituted miniature in it. This aspect was widespread symptom among excavations. It means those behaviors are not a coincident but intentional purpose which was popular at that time. On this chapter, I will sum up all things and then figure out the meaning of space at particular place of ceremony and ceremonial behaviorson each remains, moreover the target(대상) or purpose of such behaviors.
Human being is mortal. It is what everybody knows from the Paleolithic Age. Such an inescapable death gave us horror, and made us look beyond the grave. With real agricultural production, society became diversified and urbanized. The meaning of the death followed the hierarchic system of that society. The funeral procedure and rituals were not just a simple ceremony for the deceased but a symbol of his/her rank and inheritance.
In the process of investigating tombs including dolmen, I examined the style of remnants and lay-out from the point of view that they are not merely existing here and there. I think each object have some identical meanings and have been found out as a consequences of burial rituals. The fact that the condition of site existence is similar to the remains of ceremony in the group residence can be the evidence of elevating the possibility of my conclusion.
Now we can recover the procedure of funeral rituals(장송의례의 과정) by both taking a look at each sub-procedures to identify what kinds of relics are used in what kinds of shapes and tracing the process from the point of death to the burial reversibly with examining the location of excavation, condition, kinds.
There was various type of rock engraving paintings where gave much influence to our culture in primitive era such as Siberia, Mongol(몽골), China etc. The pictograph describes wish. The abstract drawings are considered to indicate the objects of wish or hope. The southern area of Korean peninsula also belongs to the side part of the cultural region of rock engraving painting. Although there are not that many cases, engraved paintings with co-related element are found in many places.
There are some controversies on the time and content of stone engraving pictures but we can say that the time of the drawing is around the Bronze Age. The contents of them are similar to the goal or wish to those people. When we consider the places of rock, the style of engraving and the patterns expressing something were distributed through wide region. It is enough to mention that it shows the common notion people had in their mind at that time.
Many kinds of bronze wares were found in many places all over the Korean peninsula. Among them, some sites have obvious features like tomb or residence, and others have uncertain or unknown properties. Cases of latter are not rare. If we consider various meanings of bronze ware, we can hardly guess that the remains of bronze ware are just scattered randomly without reason such as the result of ritual process. But the interpretation of it has not been solved clearly yet.
The bronze ware was for special ranks like chief or shaman from its origin and it was mainly made as a weapon or wares for special rituals. As time went by, the character changed toward wares for ceremonies or converted to the purpose of wares for religious services. This change seems to be related directly to the in-flow of the ironware culture. The meaning of bronze ware has degraded and changed. Such a change of bronze ware is related to the changes of the concept of powerful class or chief. Therefore bronze ware--the symbol of the change--is offered to the burial after all. This offering to the burial can not be an individual act but by the group ceremony held by powerful class of chiefdom. The investigation on this issue will give us an important clue to understand the social changes at that time.
We looked over various aspects of ritual hold throughout day-to-day life in the Bronze Age. We also understood the meaning of the ceremony place, the character of people in there and feature shown on the remains. Though some parts of them are missing, the procedure of ceremonies could be recovered due to this study. Furthermore, we could figure out both what they searched for and what their target was through a set of ceremonies like this mentioned above. Let s think about how many portions of human life do the ceremonies take part in. The analysis of this study made it possible to understand the veiled part of the life or society in The Bronze Age. And one more thing, we compared the change of notion with the development of society so that we could have a chance to build a new angle of view on the process of development for human being. It would be meaningful to us all.