The Ancient State of Puyŏ in Northeast Asia: Archaeology and Historical Memory

Description

Mark E. Byington explores the formation, history, and legacy of the ancient state of Puyŏ, which existed in central Manchuria from the third century BCE until the late fifth century CE. As the earliest archaeologically attested state to arise in northeastern Asia, Puyŏ occupies an important place in the history of that region. Nevertheless, until now its history and culture have been rarely touched upon in scholarly works in any language. The present volume, utilizing recently discovered archaeological materials from Northeast China as well as a wide variety of historical records, explores the social and political processes associated with the formation and development of the Puyŏ state, and discusses how the historical legacy of Puyŏ its historical memory contributed to modes of statecraft of later northeast Asian states and provided a basis for a developing historiographical tradition on the Korean peninsula. Byington focuses on two major aspects of state formation: as a social process leading to the formation of a state-level polity called Puyŏ, and as a political process associated with a variety of devices intended to assure the stability and perpetuation of the inegalitarian social structures of several early states in the Korea-Manchuria region. THE ANCIENT STATE OF PUYŎIN NORTHEAST ASIA: Archaeology and Historical Memory CONTENTS List of Plates, Figures, and Tables Acknowledgments A Note to the Reader A Note on the Politics of Romanization Introduction 1. The Beginnings of History in Northeast Asia 2. Ancient Peoples and States of Northeast China and Korea 3. The Archaeology of Puyŏ—Part One: Bronze Age Antecedents 4. The Archaeology of Puyŏ—Part Two: Formation of the Puyŏ State 5. History of the Puyŏ State 6. Society and Territory of the Puyŏ State 7. Post-Conquest Puyŏ Survivals Conclusion: Two Phases of State Formation Introduction to the Appendixes: Puyŏ in Studies of Historical Geography Appendix A: The Capital of the Puyŏ State Appendix B: Koguryŏ’s Puyŏ-sŏng Appendix C: Parhae’s Puyŏ-bu Bibliography Index HARVARD EAST ASIAN MONOGRAPHS