This study attempted to identify the features of each stage of jar coffin production in areas along
the Yeongsangang River and the significance of the professional skills used in their production.
Earthenware kiln sites in Honam Province, where numerous jar coffins have been unearthed, were
examined as part of the study. The examination confirmed the possibility of kilns being used to
produce jar coffins. The sites in Oryang-dong, Naju, where the professional production of jar coffins
was carried out, were examined with the focus on the locations, structures, and relics unearthed there
in an attempt to elucidate the characteristics of the sites of professional jar coffin production. Finally,
the features of each stage were checked by dividing each production stage into large and small-scale
production based on the results of the aforesaid analysis of the kiln sites, and then the significance of
the professionalized production of jar coffins along the Yeongsangang River was reviewed.
The discovery of dozens of kilns and a large number of fragments of jar coffins at the sites in
Oryang-dong, Naju points to the professional production of jar coffins there. The participants in
this study confirmed the possibility that jar coffins were produced in kilns through the experimental
archaeological restoration of kilns and firing experiments. The Oryang-dong kilns became
standardized through the professional production of large jar coffins and acquired optimized structural
features that allowed jar coffins to be moved in and out of the kilns. When and how kiln operation was
carried out could be checked based on the result of reviewing the relics, overlapping relationships, and
dating.
The types of jar coffins most commonly used in the 5thcenturywereu-shaped, which suggests that
the process of developed gradually from a stage of small-scale production, when large house hold jars
were used as coffins, to a stage of large-scale production, when special jars were specifically produced
for use as coffins. The over all development of jar coffin production coincided with the switch from
small-scale production to large-scale production at earthenware kilns. This change to a large-scale
production system is thought to reflect the condition of a society in which a hierarchy had formed.
In connection with the purpose of supply ing special earthenware jar coffins, a group of professional
producers must have emerged in present-day Oryang-dong, leading to the existence of a jar-coffin
society in areas along the Yeongsangang River for more than 100 years