단양 구낭굴 4차발굴과 연구성과

The 4th Excavation of Gunang Cave Site, Danyang and its Research Results

During this investigation, the Gunang Cave Site was excavated at San 32 Yeocheon-ri, Gagok-myeon, Danyang-gun, Chunkbuk. The site is located on a southern hillside of a mountain between Gagok-myeon and Eosangcheon-myeon, Danyang-gun. Until now, the investigation on the Gunang Cave Site has been done 4 times, including this excavation. The site became known with the report of Mr. Gwang-hoon Im, the history teacher of Maepo High School, in February 1986. The 1st investigation was done by Chungbuk National University Museum from June 28th to July 20th 1986 that there was found distributions of stone tools, bone tools, and faunal remains reaching a spot 87m distant from the entrance. And through the 2nd investigation from July 20th to August 12th 1988, there were discovered 13 layers. The 3rdinvestigation was carried out from November 27 to December 28 1998, intensively on the wide space inside the cave. There were excavated not only many cut-marks on animal bones but also stone tools made of cave-in materials with a lot of animal bones belonging to the Cervidae, Panthera tigris, Ursus arctos L., and Rhinocerotidae. The 4th investigation of this time was carried out by Institute of Korean Prehistory at a request of Danyang-gun. The purpose aimed to gather information and character of the sedimentation of unexplored cave entrance, with which to the environment and human lifestyle at that time. Moreover, it was very urgent to set up a conservation measure of the cave for the future research. With the central aim, the excavation team performed an analysis on transformation of the 3rdlayer, 100m thick, gauging the whole size of cave and arranging surroundings of the cave. Excavated area was divided into 1×1m grids that the sedimentation, 1m thick, could be excavated precisely by 5cm. For all the back-dirt, water floatation was done with a fine screen of 2mm. After the floatation, there were done works to find faunal remains. Through it, we were able to fine tiny bones such as rats as well as teeth of big animals. And removing soils of slope next to the entrance to disclose bottom rocks, the surroundings were arranged with 2×2 grids. Korea Cave Research Institute conducted a precise measure to get an actual size of the entrance and cave itself. Through the excavation, there has been found much charcoal, with which we made a request to research institution to analyze floral species and AMS dating of bones found in the same level with charcoal. With minute analyses, we got to get information of sedimentation of the 3rdlayer, the 1st cultural layer, which is divided into 5 sub layers. The faunal remains include 12 kinds of mammal, 1 amphibian, and 1 avifaunal remain, whose 90% is deer fossils. Besides, from the quaternary geological analysis, the 1st cultural layer was identified to have formed during the latter part of last glacier that it means H2, H4, H5 as well as H3 in the land of Korea can possibly be found with the future research. As well, we got a result that the cave layers were formed gradually for 50,000 years with analyses of the 2 charcoal samples of this excavation and 5 samples of deer fossils of the 3rd investigation. The species of wood were identified Prunus, Acer spp., Fraxinus spp.. All three kinds are living in the temperate zone in Korea that we can assume the climate was similar to that in those days. Especially, ground bone tools, bones with cut-marks, many pieces of charcoal, and burnt bones are very important materials to shed a light on the human behaviors, having lived in the Gunang Cave. The Gunang Cave Site has a big significance, in that it is rare occasion that a cave site bears a quaternary sedimentation in Korea. So far, however,the investigations have not been thorough that we cannot affirm exact characters of the site. But, we hope that the data of the previous investigations would accelerate research on the site with the information that we acquired thorough this ex