The Ancient State of Puyŏ in Northeast Asia: Archaeology and Historical Memory by Mark E. Byington (review)

It is a rare and momentous occasion when such a comprehensive and well-researched monograph about the archaeology and history of an ancient state of Northeast Asia—in this case, Puyŏ—appears in print. Located in central Jilin Province, China, Puyŏ formed during a time that spans late pre-history (c. third century b.c.) and developed during the proto-historical period of Northeast Asia, persisting, in one form or another, until the late fifth century a.d. Although it was an important kingdom in Northeast Asian and Korean historiography, it left no records of its own. Puyŏ is mentioned briefly in many publications about Korean archaeology and history, however, because of its pivotal role in the claims of legitimacy of the so-called successor states of Koguryŏ, Paekche, and even Palhae.

In this volume, Byington reconstructs the first-ever history in any language of the origin, development, and decline of the Puyŏ state in the context of the history of ancient Northeast Asia. He uses archaeological data extracted from various excavation reports, grey literature, and journal articles to create a picture of Puyŏ and its antecedents that is structured by diachronic changes in material culture. He also evaluates historical documents from various sources, both primary and secondary to summarize the history of the state.

Byington provides a detailed account of Puyŏ’s society and territory, and of the state’s irreversible decline after an attack by Murong Huang in a.d. 346. In the conclusion, he evaluates the diachronic characteristics of Puyŏ’s development as a state-level society, using contemporary archaeological literature about social-evolutionary theoretical models and archaeological literature about identity and ethnic formation. According to Byington, the advantage of a comparative analysis based on both archaeological data and historical records is the greater clarity that these fields can bring to a single subject by asking different questions (229).

In addition, Byington cautiously reviews foundation myths as a potential alternative source of information for the founding of Puyŏ from an emic perspective (296). The case of Puyŏ involves migration and other themes also found in Paekche and Koguryŏ, but these themes are in need of critical evaluation because they involve imaginary characters. Byington proposes that these myths may be better understood as devices created to legitimate the heritage of the aforementioned states. In the substantial set of appendixes at the end of the book, he assesses data about, and hypothetical models of, the capitals of Puyŏ.

Although the archaeology of Puyŏ per se is indispensable for Northeast Asian specialists, the part of the book that may be most interesting to historians and archaeologists in general is Chapter 7 and the conclusion, in which Byington discusses the foundations of Puyŏ, and how its foundation myths informed the formation of its successor states. In this book, Byington begins to move into the same territory as such renowned scholars as Loewe, Shaughnessey, von Falkenhausen, and Lewis, who masterfully use the methods of archaeology and history to create a picture of historical China.¹