Yangdong-ri Ancient Tombs (Gimhae)

Yangdong-ri Ancient Tombs is a cluster of Gaya confederacy burial sites formed between the 2nd century BCE and the 5th century CE, upgraded to Historic Site No. 454 in 2004. It is Gimhae's largest tomb cluster, with graves densely packed underground across roughly 100,000㎡.

Since the first excavation in 1984, four rounds of surveys between 1990 and 1996 uncovered 548 tombs — wooden coffin burials, wooden chamber burials, stone-lined burials, and jar burials among them — along with more than 5,100 artifacts including pottery, bronzeware, and ironware. Because burial styles kept shifting over the centuries, and the full sequence survives here, scholars refer to the site as a "gallery of Gaya tomb styles."

Iron artifacts like armor and ring-pommel swords point to Gaya's reputation as an "Iron Kingdom," while Chinese-style bronze mirrors and cauldrons alongside Japanese-style bronze spears reveal a confederacy actively engaged in maritime trade.