2021, Vol.11, No.1

Asia Review 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.86

pISSN : 2234-0386
https://journal.kci.go.kr/asiareview

This paper aims to examine Goguryeo murals from an East Asian perspective. It begins by noting that the murals of Goguryeo tombs have, until now, generally been viewed within the framework of the Goguryeo Kingdom. Although the adoption of such a premise and its accompanying cultural framework may at ﬁrst appear to be unproblematic, the way in which this approach has resulted in the overlapping of the concept of the ancient state with the concept of the modern nation state was pointed out. Thus, the need to break free from the shackles of an identity based on the nation state – at least when exploring issues of cultural adoption and exchange was proposed. From this standpoint, two issues were addressed in relation to Goguryeo murals. The ﬁrst was the need for a critique of the notion of the universality of Goguryeo murals. For this purpose, universal attributes that penetrate all East Asian murals, were identiﬁed. In particular, it was noted that the common purpose of the messages presented by the murals of the tomb, a place where the dead were laid to rest, was the ascension from the tomb to the heavenly world in the afterlife. It was argued that Goguryeo murals must also be understood by taking into consideration this universal nature. The second issue was the individuality of the Goguryeo murals. Before looking for characteristics distinctive to Goguryeo, attention should be paid to the contents and techniques of the paintings themselves. Mural paintings were inﬂuenced by the tradition of East Asian mural paintings, the painting style of the painter’s group, and the acceptance of new pictorial trends, in addition to the requests of the deceased and his or her family. For this reason, murals within Goguryeo were bound to be individualistic and diverse. The combination of these two elements – of the universal nature of the East Asian mural tradition and the individual nature of the murals – can be put forth as the distinctive characteristic element of Goguryeo murals.

Ancient Chinese wushu coins recovered from burials of the Yeongnam region were regarded foremost as a kind of ‘foreign object’ in an attempt to arrive at a new interpretation of this artifact type. Network analysis, which allows for new ways of identifying and visualizing patterns of archaeological data, was undertaken on a data set consisting of all foreign objects from Yeongnam region burials. The results of the analysis revealed that wushu coins were present at sites of high centrality (Daho-ri, Yongjeon-ri), middle centrality (Yangji-ri), and low centrality (Imdang). It was suggested that the wushu coins had been circulated from sites of high centrality to sites of low centrality, and that in this process, these foreign objects gained different meanings and undertook different functions. In addition, the relationship between currency and the market economy was explored and various cases of Roman coins discovered in the ‘barbaric world’ were examined to support such an interpretation. The present study not only proposes a new interpretation of ancient Chinese coins excavated on the Korean Peninsula, but also illustrates the usefulness of network analysis on archaeological data sets.

The domestication of chickens occurred relatively recently in the Chinese continent and the Indian sub-continent and has spread to all parts of the world. However, the rate of spread was not uniform in each region, and domesticated chickens did not easily spread to surrounding areas, which is quite different from the case of other domesticated species. Introducing and raising domesticated animals must meet all the environmental, economic, and social conditions of the region into which that animal is being introduced. Once introduced, these animals tend to become regarded as prestige products due to their scarcity. In Korea and Japan, the introduction and spread of chickens took place very slowly despite these regions being located very close to the Chinese continent, one of the central areas of chicken domestication. On the Korean Peninsula, chickens appear to have symbolized the founding power base of Silla, providing political capital due to its scarcity in the early days of its introduction. However, since wild pheasants were actively used for food and sacriﬁcial offerings on the Korean Peninsula, domesticated chickens did not immediately replace them. It was only gradually over time that domesticated chickens replaced the wild pheasants.