A Herman Ottó Múzeum Évkönyve 32. Kunt Ernő emlékére. (1994)

TANULMÁNYOK - BYONG-MO KIM: Megalitikus kultúrák Koreában (magyar és angol nyelven)

Stone Cist As far as the structure of the stone cist is concerned, one may find many variations such as a stone coffin consisting of slab stones - four walls, the bottom and the cover with one slab stones respectively or in some cases a wall of a cist consists of many of small slab stones. In other cases there is no bottom stone at all. However, the term, stone cist in this paper is the stone box consisting of slab stones to contain the dead. Therefore, other types of stone burials like stone burial consisting of block stones or stone chamber tombs into which the corpse is buried through the gate are excluded. Apart from the Korean peninsula stone eists were excavated by the Japanese archaeologists. In a site called Chi-fen in Inner Mongolia revealed many stone cists (around first millenium B. C.) which consist of several slab stones for a wall.

2 These bronze age stone cists revealed bronze buttons, bronze knives as well as reddish pottery. In the Russian Maritime Region stone cists of the middle of the first millenium B. C. have been excavated along the Heilung-chiang and in Chi-lin. To the northeast of China the Sungari region, the Liao-ning peninsula and the T'ang-shan region in Ho-pei province belong to the stone cist cultural zone in N. E. Asia. In the Tibetan region stone cists were excavated by Cheng, Te-Kun along the upper stream of the River Min where the champles of the menhir were mentioned previously. In Japan the stone cist seems to have appeared during the latest phase of the Jomon culture as an underground structure of the dolmen. The known sites of the stone cists tend to be found in the western part of Japan such as Kyushu, Chukoku, and Shikoku. According to the distribution of the stone eist in N. E. Asia, one might assume that the stone cist culture in Korea had some cultural relavances with early metallic culture in Southern Siberia and this kind of hypothesis has generally been accepted for the last couple of decades since there was no other clues for any other interpretations. Yet, as a result of recent archaeological efforts many stone cists were excavated in site by professor Sung, Wen-hun at Pei-nan; eastern coast of Taiwan. This excavation seems to be very crucial because the existence of the stone cist of the prehistoric age can be a stepstone for us to bridge the stone cist culture in Korea with the counter parts of Java

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. Sumatra, and India which have long been observed. In addition the places where stone cist are found there always are, dolmens without many exceptions in Asia. Consequently one can assume the stone cist culture in Asia was not only a Southern Siberian tradition but also a strong prehistoric tradition in South Asia. From this brief survey of stone cist culture in Asia it is noted: that stone cists culture existed in Asia from the bronze age, that the distribution of stone cists in Asia seems to be surrounding the Chinese subcontinent from the North-S. Siberia, Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea down to the south-Taiwan, Java, Sumatra, India and Tibet. 2 The Society of Oriental Archaeology, 1938, Chi-feng-shanhou, Tokyo (Japanese) 3 Van der Hoop., 1932, Megalothic Remains in South Sumatra Zutphen (English). Kim, B. 1980, „Megalithié Culture in Java", JKAS, 8 (Korean with English abstract) 146