Stone and Village Memory: The Temporality of Cultural Landscapes Constituted by the Dolmens of Seongsong-myeon, Gochang

1. Introduction

Across Korean prehistory, dolmens—the megalithic heritage of the peninsula—have long been understood largely through typologies of burial structures and chronological schemes. Recent currents in interpretive archaeology and landscape anthropology, however, propose reading dolmens as place-making devices at the intersection of topography, horizon, celestial motion, and human practice (Tilley, 1994; Ashmore & Knapp, 1999). From this vantage, landscape is not a mere backdrop but a temporal process contingently formed through entanglements of human and nonhuman elements, within which memory and meaning are accumulated and recomposed (Ingold, 1993). Alongside the traditional concept of the cultural landscape as a cultural product (C. O. Sauer, 1925), the world-heritage discourse defines “cultural landscape” as a visible and invisible composite produced by the long-term interaction of people and nature (UNESCO, 2023). Dolmens are thus both material funerary architectures and mnemonic markers; through communal practice they are re-signified as lieux de mémoire (Halbwachs, 1992; Nora, 1989; Smith, 2006; Harrison, 2013).

This study applies that problem consciousness to the case of Seongsong-myeon. Seongsong-myeon of Gochang-gun, Jeollabuk-do, exhibits a dense distribution of dolmens at the legal-ri (administrative village) scale, and accumulated local descriptions indicate that individual features tend not to be randomly scattered but to form clustered arrangements in relation to peaks, ridgelines, watercourses, and the horizon (Lee & Noh, 2024). In particular, accounts that the long-axis orientation and the directionalities of the front/back in many dolmens correspond to specific peaks or to sunrise/sunset points at the summer solstice, the equinoxes, and the winter solstice suggest that prehistoric communities inscribed seasonal rhythms into the landscape (Lee & Noh, 2024). Further, evidence indicates that village-scale rites, commemorations, and educational activities have recurred with the dolmens as mediators, organizing a circulation of memory between stone and people (Lee & Noh, 2024). These accumulated records show that Seongsong-myeon is a fitting field for probing the binding of “stone-peak-bearing-narrative.”

Accordingly, this study aims to elucidate in an integrated manner the co-constitution of place, collective memory, cultural landscape, and temporality around the dolmens of Seongsong-myeon. First, we analyze how the siting, distribution, and orientation of dolmens couple with the seasonal horizon to reproduce a sense of time (Ingold, 1993; Tilley, 1994; Lee & Noh, 2024). Second, we examine how dolmens mediate the circulation of collective memory at the levels of ritual, commemoration, and education (Halbwachs, 1992; Nora, 1989; Smith, 2006). Third, we analyze how transformations of interpretive regimes—from colonial-period surveys to contemporary discourses of world heritage, tourism, and education—have influenced place-making and landscape governance (Harrison, 2013; UNESCO, 2023; Lee & Noh, 2024).

This study pursues the following scholarly and practical contributions. Conceptually, it relocates the dolmen from “tomb” to “cultural landscape of time” (Ingold, 1993; Tilley, 1994; Ashmore & Knapp, 1999). Methodologically, it specifies a humanities-archaeological procedure that combines orientation-horizon reading with analysis of mnemonic practices. Practically, within the living-area context of world heritage, it derives proposals for outdoor interpretive design, school-linked STEAM education, night-sky-friendly lighting, and inclusive circulation design (UNESCO, 2023; Smith, 2006; Lee & Noh, 2024). Through these discussions, interpretation of prehistoric landscapes is extended from archaeological chronology to the present layers of livelihood areas and policy operation.

2. Theoretical Background

3. Study Area and Methods

The primary object of analysis in this study is the distribution of dolmens in, and descriptive records for, Seongsong-myeon, Gochang-gun, Jeollabuk-do. As basic sources, we used the on-site survey records, drawings, and interpretive texts contained in the Gochang-gun volume on dolmens—Seongsong-myeon (Lee & Noh, 2024). These materials continuously present, at the legal-ri scale, each dolmen’s location, form, relations with surrounding topography, and—for some features—long-axis orientation and indications of front/back, thereby providing a corpus that allows simultaneous reading of distribution and orientation. To secure the landscape context of the study area, we additionally consulted public satellite imagery, contour-based topographic maps, and field photographs; descriptions of village-level ritual, commemorative, and educational uses are taken from the main narrative of the same work as primary evidence (Lee & Noh, 2024).

The research proceeded in three stages. First, to grasp relations among distribution, topography, and horizon, we cross-checked the per-ri lists and drawings and re-described the locations of dolmen clusters together with topographic elements (peaks, ridgelines, passes, watercourses). In this process, we organized the relative arrangement among clusters and their axes of view in landscape terms, based on directional indications recorded in the literature (e.g., “toward ○○ Peak,” “in front of △△ Pass”) (Lee & Noh, 2024). Second, to examine the presence of orientation-seasonal rhythm relations, we sampled features for which descriptions of the long-axis orientation and front/back exist, and checked correspondences with topographic markers on the horizon. Following standard procedures in archaeoastronomy, orientation readings are described as relative azimuthal indications, and we note potential error arising from differences in terrain elevation and visibility (Ruggles, 1999). We also maintained a conservative criterion in comparing bearings for seasonal events (summer/winter solstices; vernal/autumnal equinoxes), describing correspondences in relation to topographic markers rather than relying on numerical calculation (Tilley, 1994; Ruggles, 1999). Third, to connect the layers of practice and discourse, we extracted records on village rituals, commemorative customs, and educational/interpretive uses, and articulated them with theoretical discussions of placeness, collective memory, and cultural landscape (Halbwachs, 1992; Nora, 1989; Smith, 2006; Harrison, 2013). The World Heritage Operational Guidelines are referenced as a framework for institutional translation across interpretation, conservation, circulation, and signage (UNESCO, 2023).

Criteria for inclusion and exclusion were set as follows. For distribution and orientation analysis, we prioritized cases within Seongsong-myeon for which clusteredness and relations to surrounding topography are comparatively clear in the descriptions; features whose original siting has been weakened by relocation or re-assembly were excluded where location and orientation could be confused (Lee & Noh, 2024). For descriptions of ritual, commemorative, and educational practices, we used the same work’s narrative as primary material, while handling with caution cases whose dates or agents are unclear. On this refined corpus, we applied triangulation that cross-validates landscape readings, orientation interpretations, and practice records (Ashmore & Knapp, 1999; Ingold, 1993).

Units of analysis are divided into three layers: the individual dolmen, the dolmen cluster, and the view axes at the village-topography-horizon scale. At the individual level we focus on relations among the long axis/front indication and nearby markers; at the cluster level we consider alignment within the distribution and the continuity of spacing and sightlines between clusters; at the landscape level we examine topographic markers—peaks, ridgelines, and passes—and their symbolic correspondences with seasonal events. This multi-layered analysis aligns with this study’s aim to understand dolmens not as isolated structures but as cultural landscapes formed through entanglements of distribution, orientation, practice, and discourse (Ingold, 1993; Tilley, 1994; Smith, 2006).

The interpretive procedure follows the “landscaping temporality” frame set out in the theoretical background. We first describe how seasonal rhythms are materially inscribed through siting, distribution, and orientation; we then present, through case narratives, how repeated practices of ritual, commemoration, and education mediate those rhythms into social memory. Finally, we examine the moments in which operational/governance devices—signage, interpretation, conservation, circulation—serve to institutionalize memory, thereby arguing how the meanings of prehistoric landscapes are translated and stabilized within today’s living areas (UNESCO, 2023; Harrison, 2013).

Ethics and limitations are summarized as follows. Because this study primarily uses publicly published materials and open geographic data, risks concerning personal or sensitive information are minimal. However, orientation and horizon readings are secondary, literature-based procedures; compared with on-site surveying, there is the possibility of azimuthal error and of occluded lines of sight. To compensate, we prioritize qualitative description grounded in relative relations to topographic markers and minimize presentation of quantitative figures (Ruggles, 1999). Moreover, descriptions of ritual, commemorative, and educational practices are constrained by the contexts of their time of writing; long-term change will require follow-up fieldwork and supplementation through oral history. While clearly stating these limitations, the present procedure—crossing literature, landscape, and discourse—ensures the minimum credibility necessary to reconstruct the Seongsong-myeon case as a cultural landscape of time (Lee & Noh, 2024; Ashmore & Knapp, 1999).

In the next chapter, we apply the above procedures to sequentially analyze: the coupling of distribution-topography-horizon; the interpretation of orientation-seasonal rhythms; the mediation of practices of ritual, commemoration, and education; and transformations of interpretive regimes and governance.

4. Analysis and Research Results

5. Discussion

The discussion in this chapter reorganizes, on theoretical, comparative-case, and methodological planes, the significance of the Seongsong-myeon dolmen cultural landscape on the basis of the foregoing analysis, and interpretively illuminates its points of contact with present-day contexts of use. First, the Seongsong-myeon case lends persuasive support to repositioning the dolmen beyond the dimension of a funerary structure as a place-device that mediates time. The chain formed by siting and distribution, orientation and horizon, and practices of ritual, commemoration, and education empirically supports the view that landscape is not a fixed backdrop but a condensation of rhythms and practices (Ingold, 1993; Tilley, 1994). In particular, the inscription of seasonal horizons where topographic markers and seasonal events combine renders visible, as a “temporal grammar,” the binding among stone, peak, bearing, and narrative—an understanding consonant with World Heritage discourse that defines cultural landscape as a composite of relations and processes (UNESCO, 2023).

Second, the clustered distribution and array of sight axes in Seongsong-myeon suggest that alignments and the organization of sight—long discussed in European megalithic studies—can likewise serve as key interpretive levers for Korean prehistoric landscapes. As Bradley (1998) and Bender (1998) emphasize, megalithic monuments organize paths and sight in relation to surrounding topography, and such organized sight, coupled with ritual movement, embodies memory. In Seongsong-myeon, multiple clusters meet movement routes that link gentle slopes, river-terrace scarps, and passes, creating points of segmentation in the view; when such segmentation points lie along the extension of a long axis, the embodiment of seasonal rhythm becomes possible (Lee & Noh, 2024; Ruggles, 1999). This interpretation is distinct from attempts to subsume the characteristics of Korean prehistoric landscapes under a Eurocentric comparative frame; rather, it highlights a locally grounded mode of composing temporality upon regional topography and everyday rhythms.

Third, the layer of ritual, commemorative, and educational practice enables us to understand the meaning of the Seongsong-myeon landscape at the level of the reproduction of social memory. As Halbwachs (1992) argued, memory is organized within social frames, and as Nora (1989) notes, lieux de mémoire settle through repetitive performance and narrativization. In the Seongsong-myeon case, interpretation, signage, and field-trip routes function as devices that standardize memory, yet village orality and rhythms of everyday life introduce local variations into that standardization. Consequently, the cultural landscape of Seongsong-myeon can be understood as a system that renews meaning through interactions between institutional standardization and lived practice—an insight that resonates with critical-heritage claims that “heritage lives when it is used” (Smith, 2006; Harrison, 2013).

Fourth, shifts in interpretive regimes show that the meanings of place have undergone translation and adjustment at interfaces where differing institutional demands—investigation, conservation, tourism, and education—meet. Relocations and restorations of certain dolmens, the evolution of interpretive language, and the introduction of outdoor circulation have reconfigured placeness at both material and discursive layers (Lee & Noh, 2024). The critical point is not that change is inevitable, but that change should be designed so as not to impair the continuity of sight axes and the rhythms of memory. The World Heritage Operational Guidelines’ principles of integrated interpretation-circulation-lighting offer a frame that can institutionalize such criteria (UNESCO, 2023). For example, when introducing evening visitation, night-sky-friendly lighting should be placed so as not to obstruct observation of seasonal horizons, and barrier-free circulation should prioritize route designs that preserve the flow of inter-visibility across clusters.

Fifth, the “landscaping temporality” proposed in this study functions, beyond its empirical application to Seongsong-myeon, as an analytic tool for dynamically apprehending interactions among distribution, orientation, practice, and governance. This tool treats, as a single bundle, the mutual feedback among preservation of individual features, inter-cluster sight design, educational/touristic programming, and standards for signage and interpretation; the result is to conceptualize the meaning of landscape not as a static attribute but as an adjustable process. At the same time, the methodological limitations of this study are clear. Literature-based readings of orientation carry greater potential for error than on-site surveying, and records of ritual and educational practices vary by time of writing. By explicitly acknowledging these limits and maintaining a conservative criterion based on correspondence with relative topographic markers, we sought to avoid over-deterministic interpretation (Ruggles, 1999).

In short, the Seongsong-myeon dolmen cultural landscape is a case in which the grammar of time has been constructed at the junction where prehistoric knowledge meets today’s lifeworld, and this grammar remains renewable through the co-constitution of placeness, memory, and landscape. This recognition implies that policies for the conservation, interpretation, and use of Seongsong-myeon should not be single-dimension interventions, but relational designs that respect the grammar of time.

6. Conclusion and Suggestions

This study has offered a humanities-based elucidation—using the dolmens of Seongsong-myeon, Gochang-gun, Jeollabuk-do as a case—of how dolmens intertwine with village memory to constitute the temporality of a cultural landscape. The analysis shows that Seongsong-myeon’s dolmen cultural landscape forms a chain in which siting and distribution, orientation and the horizon, practices of ritual/commemoration/education, and interpretive/governance devices are sequentially articulated into material inscription → practical mediation → institutional translation. In this way, the dolmen is not confined to a funerary structure: it is a marker that projects time into the external landscape, a medium that renews social memory, and the nucleus of a cultural landscape that is made present within institutional devices (Ingold, 1993; Tilley, 1994; Smith, 2006; UNESCO, 2023).

The theoretical contributions can be summarized in three points. First, through the conceptual frame of “landscaping temporality,” the meaning of the prehistoric landscape is shifted from a static attribute to a processual and relational composition. Second, by presenting an analytic procedure that combines the four layers of distribution-orientation-practice-governance, the study specifies a methodology for treating, in an integrated manner, topography-sight-rhythm-discourse in the interpretation of megalithic heritage. Third, through the Seongsong-myeon case, it demonstrates that a distinctively Korean mode of composing temporality in prehistoric landscapes operates through the coupling of regional topography, everyday rhythms, and educational practice.

Policy and practical suggestions can be organized as follows. First, conservation and interpretation standards should be redesigned to include, beyond the physical state of individual features, the continuity of inter-cluster sight axes and the seasonal horizon among core objects of preservation. Second, education and tourism should be phased in around the observation and interpretation of the seasonal horizon—through school-linked STEAM programs and night-sky-friendly evening visitation—while standardizing lighting and circulation so as not to impede observation (UNESCO, 2023). Third, signage and interpretive language should differentiate tiers for expert, general, and child audiences, adopting narrative structures that reveal the performativity of the lieu de mémoire, yet leaving room for local variations that reflect village orality and everyday rhythms (Halbwachs, 1992; Nora, 1989). Fourth, physical interventions such as relocation and restoration should be implemented only within the bounds of prior assessment procedures that verify correspondences between sight axes and orientation-topography, so as not to damage the grammar of time.

The limitations of this study lie in the conservatism of interpretation stemming from the absence of on-site surveying and from time-of-writing variance in the literature. Follow-up research should quantitatively reinforce orientation-horizon interpretations by combining direct observation of seasonal events and precise azimuthal surveying with numerical modeling of terrain elevation and lines of sight. In addition, changes in ritual, commemorative, and educational practice can be tracked through long-term longitudinal ethnography and citizen-science observation programs, thereby contributing to the operationalization of the “landscaping temporality” frame as a set of management guidelines.

In conclusion, the temporality of the cultural landscape constituted by the Seongsong-myeon dolmens is a device of time that is continuously written and read at the junction where prehistoric knowledge meets contemporary life. When conservation, interpretation, and use are redesigned to respect this device, Seongsong-myeon can take shape as an exemplary case in which the presentness of a World Heritage living area and the memory of the local community mutually reinforce one another.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) under grant number NRF-2023S1A5C2A02095114

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