Guest Editor’s Introduction: Alternative Approaches in the Korean Archaeology

Abstract

Archaeology has played a significant role in reconstructing and formulating Korean prehistory and history since it emerged as a subdiscipline of history and anthropology in the early twentieth century. Due to its unique methodology of discovering material records and deciphering their meanings and context, archaeology has identified itself either as a pure classical humanities approach or a new scientific approach to the past. In either case, the glaring deficiency in Korean archaeology is lack of dialogue among researchers. As a modern independent discipline distinguished from conventional historiographic research, Korean archaeology should be devoid of positivistic claims because actors and actions of the past are not to be clearly imprinted on the material data or artifact assemblages, archaeologically. With actors and actions unclarified, the narrative can’t be constituted; archaeological knowledge and its descriptive phrases always tend to be segmentary because past events cannot but be restored as “ownerless.”