An ancient building site reveals much about the substructure of the building that used to exist there, such as its foundation. It provides insights into the social culture of the period in which it was built, including aspects of its residential cultu...
An ancient building site reveals much about the substructure of the building that used to exist there, such as its foundation. It provides insights into the social culture of the period in which it was built, including aspects of its residential culture, ritual ceremonies, and architectural skills.
Up until now ancient building sites have not been central subjects of research among specialists in Goguryeo archaeology, and much of the research on the architecture of the Goguryeo Period (circa 37 BC – 668 AD) has been based on written materials and mural paintings on the walls of ancient tombs. Since the early 2000s, various excavation survey reports on Goguryeo sites now in present-day Chinese territory have been published and Goguryeo sites in South Korea have been surveyed. Thus, materials about sites dating back to the Goguryeo Period have been accumulated, but they have yet to form the subject of comprehensive research. This paper aims to conduct a comprehensive study on such sites based on the materials accumulated to date.
Goguryeo building sites have been found in Northeastern Provinces of China and on the Korean Peninsula. This paper targets 253 dwelling sites in areas of 30 remains where excavation surveys have been carried out and of which drawings have been made.
In this study, Goguryeo building sites are divided according to the location of everyday life spaces, basic facilities, and size based on the site surveys, the relevant literature, and the mural paintings in ancient tombs. They are chiefly divided into subterranean building sites and surface building sites, depending on the location of the everyday living spaces. Surface building sites are subdivided as follows based on their foundation, i.e. those with natural stone foundations, those with continuous footing, those with layered stone foundations, those with pillar sockets, and those with no footing.
As for their construction date and lifespan, subterranean building sites, building sites with no footing, and building sites with layered stone foundations appear to have been used from around 1st century until the fall of the Goguryeo Dynasty, whereas sites with continuous footing are thought to have emerged in the early 4th century and existed until after the 6th century. Due to a lack of accurate chronological data, this study could only confirm the period of use of buildings with natural stone foundations or those with pillar sockets.
With regard to the buildings’ significance in terms of the social hierarchy, we based our assumptions on their size and whether roof-end tiles were unearthed at a given site or not. The sites with layered stone foundations are larger than other sites and many roof-end tiles have been found at them. Thus, they appear to have belonged to people with high social status. As for sites with continuous footing, those where roof-end tiles have been unearthed are larger than those without roof-end tiles. Some sites with continuous footing dating back to the early 5th century have yielded no roof-end tiles. This phenomenon applies to all sites with continuous footing dating back to the mid-5th century and thereafter. It appears that such buildings came to be used only as guard posts from the 6th century onward. Thus, it appears that the sites with continuous footing first appeared in the mid-4th century and the buildings are thought to have belonged to persons of the highest status in the social hierarchy of that time. However, the situation changed and they came to belong to people of a middle-ranking position in the social hierarchy by the 6th century. Concerning sites with natural stone foundations and those with pillar sockets, we could not confirm the details, such as their construction period or the social position of their occupants’ in the social hierarchy, due to their limited number.