Dolmen in Bugeun-ri, Ganghwa

A dolmen is a Bronze Age grave. Korea has two kinds: the table sort, with uprights holding a capstone clear of the ground, and the go-board sort, where the cover rests on small stones or directly on the earth. This is the first kind, and one of about forty in the neighbourhood. It stands 2.6 metres. The granite capstone is 6.5 metres long, 5.2 wide and 1.2 thick, which puts it well over fifty tonnes. Nobody was moving that without commanding a great many people — which is the point of it, and the reason dolmens are read as evidence that societies here had begun to stratify. This one has never been excavated. A dolmen a short distance away produced plain pottery, a polished stone dagger and a spindle whorl, and much the same is expected here. Korea holds roughly forty per cent of the world's dolmens; this group was inscribed with those at Gochang and Hwasun in 2000.

Original Text

Where it is

Region

Ganghwa, Incheon

Designation

Historic Site · 사적