Large-Scale Reservoir Construction and Political Centralization: A Case Study from Ancient Korea

The relationship between centralized political authority and the construction of large-scale irrigation systems has been a major research topic in both anthropology and archaeology for many decades. One of the objects of this research has been to determine whether large-scale irrigation works were a cause or a result of political centralization. Some scholars (e.g., Wittfogel) have argued that construction of such projects played a critical role in the emergence of centralized, bureaucratic social structures. Others believe that large-scale irrigation works were constructed only after a centralized government emerged, and that before this, local people managed relatively small-scale cooperative irrigation works without intervention of a centralized political authority. This paper argues that large-scale reservoirs were constructed only after and because of the appearance of centralized political organization, in this case, the Silla Kingdom in ancient Korea.