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When relics of a similar shape are each uncovered from two different locations far apart from one another, they are usually considered as evidence of exchange through migration, trade, or dissemination. But in some cases, the difference in time and space are too great for them to be a result of exchange. How then should such cases be understood? How is exchange different from what is not? A good example of this would be similar patterns on pottery or antenna daggers discovered on the Korean peninsula and in Europe. Antenna daggers in particular are intimately linked to the ancient Korean kingdom of Gojoseon in terms of period and region. The following sections therefore gives an introduction to archaeological sources that suggest the possibility of Gojoseon people to have engaged in long distance trade, and feature commonalities elicited from similar natural environments and the universality of mankind.

Perforated Pottery and Commonalities from Material Cultures

Archaeologists who have ever been to a museum in Europe tend to be surprised when they witness pottery on display in cases. Even lay people who are not archaeologists are likely to have had the experience of peering carefully at the pottery on display at several museums in Korea. Because prehistoric pottery that seem like they've been excavated from sites on the Korean peninsula can also be found in display cases at museums all around Europe.

Pottery most common to both areas would perforated pottery that has regularly distanced perforations encircling the rim as decoration, and pottery overlaid with an incised band below the rim as decoration. In Europe, the oldest perforated pottery to be uncovered dates back to B.C. 2,750, which was found at a Neolithic site in Neuchâtel of western Switzerland. At another site nearby, a pottery overlaid with an incised band estimated to be from B.C. 1600 was uncovered. The two types of pottery used to be popular across the Korean peninsula during the Bronze Age, enough to be discovered from most areas except for a few on the peninsula. Pottery overlaid with an incised band has also been excavated from a site in Japan dating back to the Yayoi period, a time in Japan's Bronze Age.

The reason for singling out these two types of pottery is because of the meaning their decorative patterns carry. Pottery or other sorts of tools that have a similar appearance usually elicit the conclusion that they unintentionally serve the same function or purpose. Patterns, on the other hand, are more intentionally created, in most cases to reflect the identity of their creator or that of the group their creator belongs to. Geometric patterns like the triangular pattern or the chevron pattern are so universal in both the East and West that they should be regarded to have been commonly conceived by mankind. Burnished red pottery (紅陶) is also something universal. However, adding perforations or an extra band of clay with incised markings along the rim are much more rare compared to other patterns and are extremely limited in terms of their range of distribution. So, it should indeed be interesting to find that such unique patterns can also be witnessed outside the Korean peninsula in Europe.

How then should these similarities arising between distant locations be understood? Could exchange in the liberal arts have occurred between the two locations? It's not entirely impossible, but still highly unlikely. As typical Bronze Age relics, pottery overlaid with an incised band appeared before perforated pottery on the Korean peninsula, whereas in Europe, perforated pottery was produced during the Neolithic Age ahead of pottery overlaid with an incised band. The earliest pottery overlaid with an incised band uncovered on the Korean peninsula dates back to around as early as B.C. 1,200. Perforated pottery came a bit later during the first part of the Bronze Age, appearing around B.C. 1,000 and remaining popular until around B.C. 400. So, there is more than a 1,700 to 400-year time difference between the Korean peninsula and Europe. The similarities pottery from the Korean peninsula and Europe feature therefore need to be understood as a parallel development that occurred at different times and locations.

Antenna Daggers and Hints of Long Distance Trade

Antenna daggers excavated on the Korean peninsula and southern Manchuria are relics symbolizing that long distance trade is likely to have taken place between the two regions. Antenna daggers refer to daggers with pommels shaped to resemble the antenna of butterflies or snails. The word antenna is used both in European and Korean terms that refer to such daggers, which in themselves suggests how similar their appearances are.

The pommels of antenna daggers from Northeast Asia are formed in the shape of two birds turning their heads to face each other. As time went by, the bird heads were taken away from antennas so that their shapes became more simplified. They appeared around B.C. 400 and was popular in Northeast Asia between the second century B.C. and the first century A.D. Many antenna daggers from central Europe including Greece, Austria, Germany, and western France have pommels shaped like the curled-up antennae of insects. Most of them have been uncovered from an early Iron Age culture called the Hallstatt culture that existed between 1,000 and 500 B.C., which is why antenna daggers are also called Hallstatt daggers in Europe.

A close look at the details brings out the difference between antenna daggers from Northeast Asia and Europe. Yet, they are still similar in that two antenna-like strands are spiraling inward. Then could residents who produced and used antenna daggers in Europe have engaged in exchange with those in Northeast Asia? Or is this another similarity that materialized at different times?

What is interesting is that many antenna daggers have been excavated from the Ordos, a plateau that connects Europe and Northeast Asia. Daggers from the Ordos are decorated with pommels shaped like a pair of bird heads facing each other and their beaks touching as they spiral inward. Such daggers are called Ordos antenna daggers after the region where they have been uncovered from. Ordos antenna daggers began to appear around the seventh or sixth century B.C. and grew popular in the fifth century B.C. Pommels in the shape of animals was a motif nomads used during the plateau's Bronze Age. This is why the term Ordos bronze dagger is usually associated with decorations in the shape of pigs, sheep, goats, deer, or birds.

Makers of Hallstatt antenna daggers seem to have directly and indirectly interacted with those of the double bird-headed antenna daggers in Northeast Asia with makers of the Ordos antenna daggers in between the two. Such interactions would have brought about imitations and recreations. This supposition can be made from the characteristics that Northeast Asian double bird-headed antenna daggers display. Namely, the characteristics and manufacturing techniques of lute-shaped or narrow bronze daggers from Gojoseon are all present in double bird-headed antenna daggers from Northeast Asia.

Gojoson's lute-shaped bronze daggers and narrow-bladed daggers were made out of multiple molds so that the blade, hilt, and pommel would be separately cast and then welded together. This manufacturing method is different from Europe and the Ordos where daggers were cast from a single mold and also different from the way daggers were made in China or Japan. The blade shape of Gojoseon daggers differ as well. The arris, the ridge running down the center of the blade in parallel to the blade's edges, on European and Ordos antenna daggers are thin and narrow, whereas the arris of a double bird-headed antenna dagger is identical to those of a lute-shaped or narrow-bladed dagger. The arris on such daggers were made to stand out so that for some narrow-bladed daggers, the arris seem to have been intentionally sharpened up from being polished. Furthermore, a double bird-headed antenna dagger and a narrow-bladed dagger were once excavated from the same wooden coffin tomb no. 486 at Toseong-dong, Pyeongyang that is estimated to be from the second century B.C.

Gojoseon techniques were used to produce Northeast Asian double bird-headed antenna daggers by combining a Gojoseon blade and decorations that took motifs from prairie animals, what would nowadays be called a "hybrid." A hilt with an antenna-shaped pommel like those previously uncovered from Pyeongyang has recently been discovered in Primorye, which suggests that there had been broad cultural contact between the two locations.

Archaeological Remains Showing Flexibility and Openness

Relics are evidence of human acts. Because of this, tracing the history of ancient ethnic groups that did not leave behind any written documentation was once considered possible by studying and comparing different archaeological cultures. An archaeological culture refers to a group of relics that continuously, repetitively exhibit a certain form, so an identity would be assigned to a particular relic or huge stone monument and then used to identify the group or people that created the relic or monument. Pottery, patterns, decorations, and tombs that well embody the style of a region were deemed useful in determining the identity of a certain ethnic group. And it was thought possible to use archaeological cultures defined by archaeologists to identify Neolithic ethnic groups and discover their origins and movements. So, similarities and differences between archaeological cultures were considered to have originated from those between ethnic identities, and the continuity of archaeological cultures were considered to reflect that of ethnic groups.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, diffusionists and evolutionists considered it evidence of diffusion from Europe if a certain relic found in Europe was uncovered from a non-European region. Diffusion was thought to be a result of the migration of "superior" Europeans who conquered "inferior" countries nearby. A change in the distribution of a certain archaeological relic would be interpreted to have been caused by migration, replacement, diffusion, colonization, or conquest Europeans achieved. A classic example of this is the nineteenth and early twentieth century suggestion that Chinese Neolithic painted pottery called caitao (彩陶) originated from the West, or the suggestion that the comb pattern on Korean Neolithic pottery originated from Germany.

Nazi German archaeology in the early twentieth century sent huge implications. Under the pretense of searching for the origin of modern Germans, the German linguist and Neolithic archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna tied the Germanic peoples to the historically well-known Aryan race, and stressed the superiority of the Germanic peoples by suggesting that all "non-Germanic" things should be eliminated. This developed into "racial cleansing" through the Holocaust which proved what an exclusive, closed ethnocentric history could bring about. Since then, Germany has strived to break from ethnocentrism so that German research could move forward in studying archaeological sources and the relations between ancient ethnic groups. And Germany has come to learn that an ethnic group's identity is not something closed or eternal, but something that is open and fluid.

Nazi archaeology and all sorts of theories about origin that were once dominant used to be based on the hypothesis that the substance of a material culture with clear boundaries is related to a certain people, ethnic group, tribe, or human race. That hypothesis is no longer valid. There are plenty of cases in which the boundaries of archaeological cultures do not correspond to those of ethnic groups, like the way we now wear Westernized clothes and spend American dollars. The argument over whether a pattern exhibited from a certain material culture can be used to properly identify an ethnic group's identity and its temporal continuity is very much an ongoing dispute under today's politics that operate on fixed national boundaries. By now, it has become difficult to academically identify a certain group through material culture. Instead, scholars try to grasp the process of how different cultures came to interact with one another and how that affected developments in history.

So many common relics such as comb patterns or dolmens that can be witness all over the world appear and disappear at different times and locations. The sharing of material cultural elements between two completely different groups far apart from each other have been made possible through long distance trade. Both internal and external factors have come to cause cultural changes. Choices on what to accept or reject and what to share or withhold have been made along the way. And it has become impossible to equate boundaries of material cultures with those of ethnic groups. Many archaeological relics bespeak of a past that was open and fluid. The same relics that used to be symbols testifying to "the oldest," "the largest," or "most unique" during the twentieth century when national reconstruction and economic development were priorities are telling tales in the twenty-first century about taking pride in coexistence based on "openness," "fluidity," and "elasticity."