The keyhole tomb is the indingenous type of elite in Kofun period of Japen. It has been known that its distribution be resticted within Japanese Islands. Since first report about its sporadical existence in 1984. however. a considerable number of keyhole tomb has been found in south-western part of Korea Peninsular. Now. many archaeologists of Korea and Japan show much interest in the geographical distribution of keyhole tombs and their related materials. While depending largely on the diffusionst view. the archaeological interpretations in East Asia have been strongly influenced by historical narratives of nation states. Because of the diffusionist preconception and the concerns in political history. the similartity of materrial cultures in wide geographical region was interpreted as the migration of a specific ethnic group or the political relationship between the more than two states. Under these theoretieal assumptions. there is no reasonable answer about the questions raised in this easy. First why certain ideas for constructing the burials continued in the long- term period and spreaded over the wide area including manny political or ethnic groups. Second. why certain features of the motuary practices are why certain elements of them are restricted geographically. in this essay. I would like to suggest several premises for the proper interpretation of mortuary variabilrty. First. it is not appropriate only to understand the specific materrial cultuers as the representation of the ecistence of a ethnic group or the regflection of social features of a polirical unit. To cinceptualize the continuation and the change. an the widespredad similarty and the local variation. of material cultures in time ad space framework. I introduce the concepts of 'trandition' as the long-term continuation and 'transformation' as the short-term social or ideological practices. In terms of long-duration. the basic ideas to construct the tombs in Three- kingdom period cloud be divided into two traditions. that is Punkumyo and Pongtobum. The Pongtobun is tumnuls in general. which was cinstructed at once to pile the earth or stone upon to conceal the coffin or the burial chamber. But the Punkumyo is a multi-stratified barrow. which was built and rebuilt by adding repreadedly various conffins or burial chambers into the prepared barrow. The original meaning of Punkumyo is a specific type of burials in Yayoi period before the appearance of Kofun in Japan. I use. however. the term. Punkumyo. to define the one of elite group burial traditions which continued in the long-term. The redition in Bons age. an developed into the stone barrow of Kokuyo. And then. following te Yellow Sea coastland. the tradition spreaded. by way of Chonam region of Korea. into the Japanse Islands. The most developed type of Punkumyo, which was constructed from 4th to 6th century AD, are found in Chonnam region. In that period. the idea of Pongtobun was introduced into each place of Korean Peninsular except Chonnam region. In this region, following the punkumyo trandition. the basic idea of burial construction was not changed. however. the new transformaytions in each elements of the burials. such as from of barrow. type of coffin, distributional patterning of corpse. and so on, were tried repeatedly. In Chonnam region. the regional and temporal variatiion of the burials. in terms of transformation. could be interpreted as the result of the various social and ideological practices of each social groups for the purpose of representing the identities. emulitions, and relations of them.
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