Quite a number of grave-boundary type dolmens with a grave-boundary around the capstone and burial facility have been reported on the southern coast of Gyeongnam province. In the Korean archaeological community, there are a couple of contrasting views on the socio-political developmental stage of the grave-boundary type dolmen society: a ranked society and an egalitarian society, respectively. Without serious discussion and analysis, a position regarding the dolmen society of the Korean peninsula as a ranked society, in particular a chiefdom, and trying to explain it with a few keywords such as chief, authority, hierarchy, economic power, and political influence has received considerable scholarly support. However, this thesis is a scholarly attempt to provide some reliable archaeological evidence to demonstrate that the grave-boundary type dolmen society on the southern coast of Gyeongnam province had been an egalitarian society rather than a ranked society or chiefdom society.
First, in this research the writer analyzed the key grave-boundary type dolmen site to see if they met the prerequisites of a complex society, and based on this, I sought to fully understand the dolmen society. As far as time and space are concerned, this work was restricted to the Bronze Age and southern coast of Gyeongnam province, respectively, and a total of 101 grave-boundary type dolmens reported at 24 sites were thoroughly reviewed and analyzed.
Specifically, based on the following four points suggested by Robert Carneiro, whether the dolmen society reached the stage of the chiefdom society or not was examined: first, the existence of monumental or religious buildings; second, the proportional relationships between the external scale of the burial and burial goods both in quantity and quality; third, the functional diversity of the unearthed artifacts and sites themselves, and interdependent relationships among the sites; fourth, hierarchy in settlements showing distinct differences between/among sites or within a site.
According to the research, there were some socio-political differences resulted from personal abilities among the members of the grave-boundary type dolmen society on the southern coast of Gyeongnam province. However, archaeological evidence showing that these differences had been institutionalized through social stratification and that the institutionalized social statuses had been inherited to the next generations is quite insufficient. Therefore, it is difficult to regard this society as a chiefdom level society. On the other hand, the grave-boundary dolmens gradually decreased, and the main burial type was replaced by wooden-coffin burials and the number of bronzeware for ritual use furnished as burial goods, including a slender bronze s ord, increased. This is concrete archaeological evidence suggesting that the wooden-coffin burial society was closer to the chiefdom level society than the grave-boundary type dolmen society.
While the grave-boundary type dolmen society on the southern coast of Gyeongnam province archaeologically represented by large scale dolmens, large ritual buildings, and bronze implements of burial goods displayed much higher cultural complexity than previous periods, it was still an egalitarian society being in the process of developing into a chiefdom level society.