Friday, August 19, 2011

Animals in a Well of Unified Silla

For our latest entry, we switch gears both spatially and temporally. Specifically, we turn our heads to Korea, and focus on more recent, archeological deposits. During my most recent family trip to Korea, we stayed for a few days in the southeastern city of Gyeongju. While there, we made a mandatory trip to the Gyeongju National Museum, which as luck would have it, is currently housing a special exhibition entitled “Animals in a Well of Unified Silla,” or, directly translated from the Korean, “Fell into a Well Silla Animals.”

My preference is the latter.

To clear up any possible misconceptions, “Unified Silla” refers to a time period, not any physical feature of the well. The Silla Kingdom (57 BCE – 935 CE) was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, during which Gyeongju was the capitol, so the present-day city is ground zero for Silla history. The contentiously-named “Unified Silla” occurred towards the end of the Silla (668 CE – 935 CE).

The gory details

(Note: All information provided after this point is from concise museum signs and Google-translated articles, so I cannot guarantee all information made the transition accurately.) Fast-forward roughly a millennia, and a recent excavation of Unified Silla (ca. 810 CE) wells, roads, and fences uncovered one particularly interesting well full of archeological booty [1]. At or near the base of this 10 m well were a plethora of ceramic vessels and bones. Over the course of two years (1998-2000) [2], over 2300 NISP (“pieces” [3]) were excavated, representing taxa including, but limited to: dog, cat, cattle, horse, deer, wild boar, rabbit, mole, mouse, ducks, crow, pheasant, thrush, falcon, snake, frog, shark, puffer fish, cod, mullet, whiting, mackerel, carp, bream, and probably most interesting, a 10-yr old human child [1][4]. A nice illustration of the well is given in unfortunately reduced size to the left [1]:

A number of these bones have been nicely prepared and placed on display in the exhibit. Just looking at the displays provides some taphonomic information, such as the difference between the near-complete representation of cat and dog elements (below) versus some taxa (crow, Korean Water Deer) represented by just one or two elements. (Note again: apologies for pictures that are far from scientific quality – they were taken while walking through a busy, crowded museum.)




Many of the elements also exhibited what appeared to represent wet rot, a poorly-understood corrosion-like modification of epiphyses and spongy bone in element with prolonged exposure to wet or moist conditions (Andrews and Cook, 1985; Andrews, 1995). This can be seen in the vertebrae and epiphyses of the cow elements below:


Also in the cow element display, the rib shafts showed a form of modification that I have never seen before:


I invite anyone to school me on this phenomenon…

So how did it all get there?

There is little doubt the material in the well was artificially introduced. Nearly all the material is concentrated in the lower 2.5 m, with the very base of the deposit almost entirely ceramic vessels referred to as “earthquake spheres,” and the top of the deposits capped with stamped tile [4]. This suggests all the material was placed at the bottom of the well at one time [1], perhaps for “purification” [4]. There is the possibility that some (perhaps most) of the elements from the subterraneous critters (rodents, moles) may have been naturally introduced, but this can’t be tested without further data. Incidentally, for those concerned about dead animals at the bottom of a water source, it turns out that cold, stagnant water actually does a decent job of hindering decomposition. Besides, just about any natural body of water will have dead animals floating in it.

The inclusion of the child is also the subject of much speculation; one hypothesis suggests he or she may have been victim of drowning, subsequently offered as a sacrifice [1] [4].

Other hypotheses lack scientific rigor...

Hopefully, there will be more concrete explanations soon – allegedly, there is to be a professional publication on the excavation before the end of the year [3].


REFS

1. Gyeongju National Museum exhibition...

2. "Fell into a well Silla animals' exhibition

3. Gyeongju museum fell into a well Silla animals' exhibition

4. Gyeongju Museum exhibition "fell into a well Silla Animals' prepared

ANDREWS, P., 1995, Experiments in taphonomy: Journal of Archaeological Science, v. 22, p. 147–153.

ANDREWS, P., and COOK, J., 1985, Natural modifications to bones in a temperate setting: Man (New Series), v. 20, p. 675–691.