ORIGINAL PAPER The emergence of rice agriculture in Korea: archaeobotanical perspectives Sung-Mo Ahn Received: 13 January 2010 / Accepted: 30 March 2010 / Published online: 5 May 2010 # Springer-Verlag 2010 Abstract This paper reviews archaeobotanical records on the beginning and spread of rice agriculture in the Korean peninsula. Argument for the earliest evidence of domesticated rice at the Sorori site, 15,000 years ago, is invalid. The evidence for rice cultivation in the Neolithic (Chulmun) is still insufficient although rice remains have been reported from a few late Neolithic sites in central-western Korea which dated to about 3000 BC. The existence of rice agriculture in the Bronze Age (Early and Middle Mumun: c.1300 ∼ 300 BC), on the other hand, is demonstrated by the high percentage and/or frequency of rice remains among crops recovered from various sites, as well as through the numerous findings of paddy fields. Rice appears to have been introduced from the Liaodong region, China, while so called 'southern diffusion route' that the beginning of rice cultivation was first stimulated by influences from Southeast Asia or South China is no more valid. Charred rice remains recovered from the Bronze Age dwellings consist of dehusked clean grains and weedy seeds are very rare among samples containing rice grains, which could be related with the harvesting and processing methods of rice. Measurements of charred rice grains also will be reported in this paper. Agricultural villages disappear from the archaeological records from the third century BC, which corresponds to the beginning of the Early Iron Age (Late Mumun), and reappear from the late first century with the emergence of urban societies. Keywords Rice remains . Archaeobotany . Prehistoric Korea . Origin of rice agriculture Introduction Prehistoric charred rice grains were first recovered from the Heunam-ri (Hunamni) site during the late 1970 s, which demonstrated that rice had been cultivated in Korea from the Bronze Age, about 1,000 B.C. (Im 1978). Recently, flotation, which has been adopted since 1990 s, has increased our understanding of prehistoric rice agriculture in Korea, and arguments that rice appeared from about 3,000 B.C. or even before 15,000 B.C. have been suggested. This article reviews the emergence and charac- teristics of early rice agriculture in the Korean peninsula based on the archeobotanical record. With regard to the prehistoric chronology, I use the term “Chulmun” to refer to the Neolithic period and “Mumun” for the Bronze and Early Iron ages; these are the names that have been given to the prevalent pottery types of each period, comb-patterned (Chulmun) and undecorated plain (Mumun) (Table 1). Emergence of rice agriculture in Korea The Sorori rice puzzle: the earliest domesticated rice or just an empty dream? The so-called “oldest” rice husks were reported from the peaty soil layer of the Sorori site (37°41′N 126°44′E) in central Korea (Lee and Woo 2000; 2003). Radiocarbon dates between 13,000 and 15,000 B.P. (15,000–18,000 cal. B.P.) were obtained from the peat soil sample, which had yielded the rice husks. The Sorori excavation team argued that the Sorori rice was one of the oldest examples of domesticated rice in the world (Park and Lee 2004; www. sorori.com). In addition, they suggested that Sorori was one of the places where rice cultivation may have originated: S.-M. Ahn (*) Wonkwang University, Iksan, Korea e-mail: sungmo@wonkwang.ac.kr Archaeol Anthropol Sci (2010) 2:89–98 DOI 10.1007/s12520-010-0029-9