• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.154-169
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• 2021

The establishment of the Bronze Age is one of the most important achievements suggested by Korean archaeology shortly after liberation. There is no doubt that Moo-Byung Yoon is the representative figure, who refuted the ambiguous Eneolithic age (金石倂用期) created by Japanese scholars and settled the concept of the Bronze Age. In this article, the author takes a new look at Yoon's institutional role in studying the Bronze Age in Korea. Until now, Yoon's representative achievement has been his typology of the Slender dagger of the Korean Peninsula. However, it is not less important that Yoon also established the Bronze Age concept with the excavation of a dolmen and a Bronze Age subterranean dwelling in Oksok-ni, Paju during the 1960s. Of course, it was not a personal assignment for Yoon. He was aided by Prof. Kim Won-Yong's work, who had introduced newly excavated materials from North Korea and China; these materials gave some insight for establishing the Bronze Age concepts in the 1960 and 1970s. Kim's suggestion about the possibility of a Korean Bronze Age led to Yoon's refined typological study on Korea's bronze wares. However, Yoon's excessive schematic classification of artifacts and reliance on the Japanese chronology became an obstacle for making the Korean Bronze Age isolated from East Asia. As a result, it is regrettable that his research led to the "cultural lag" phenomenon of Bronze Age research. Meanwhile, Japanese archaeology, which had influenced Yoon, also faced a major change. In 2003, the Japanese archaeological community revised the Yayoi culture's beginning around the 1,000 BC. This means a shift in the perception that we should understand Japan's Bronze Age in the context of the East Asian continent. Of course, it is not appropriate to reevaluate or denigrate Yoon's research from the current view. Rather, it is necessary to recognize the limitations of Yoon's time and present a new path to research by combining the archaeological tradition of refining research on the relics he maintained with a new chronological view and a macro view of East Asian archaeology. This is why we should take a new glimpse into Yoon's research.