New data and new issues for the study of origin of rice agriculture in China
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ORIGINAL PAPER
New data and new issues for the study of origin of rice agriculture in China Zhijun Zhao
Received: 2 January 2010 / Accepted: 30 March 2010 / Published online: 11 May 2010 # Springer-Verlag 2010
Abstract China was one of the major centers for the origin of agriculture in the world. The origins of agriculture in China, especially the origin of rice agriculture, made a significant contribution not only to the occurrence of Chinese civilization but also to the development of world history. Recently, the study on the origin of rice agriculture has attracted the attention of the academic community due to the dramatic development of archaeobotanical research in China. In recent years, the flotation technique has widely implemented in archaeological excavations in China. As the result, a tremendous amount of plant remains have been recovered from archaeological sites, including those much related to the study of early rice agriculture. The new data provide direct archaeological evidence for, and raise some new issues about, the origin of rice agriculture in China. For example, the rice remains from the Shangshan site, dated to ca. 10,000 cal. B.P., suggest the beginning of rice cultivation regardless of whether that rice was domesticated or not. The quantitative analysis of plant remains recovered by floatation from the Jiahu site, dated to ca. 8,000 cal. B. P., revealed that the subsistence of the Jiahu people mainly relied on fishing/hunting/gathering, while the products of rice cultivation and animal husbandry were only a supplement to their diet. The ongoing excavation, with floatation and water-sieving, at the Tianluoshan site, dated to 6,000 to 7,000 cal. B.P., suggests that rice farming, though important, was only part of a broader subsistence pattern of the Hemudu Culture, and rice domestication culminated after 6,500 B.P and the beginning of rice domestication remain unclear. Z. Zhao (*) Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100710, China e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords Rice agriculture . China . Archaeobotanical research
Introduction China is one of the major centers for the early origin of agriculture in the world. In the past, intensive study of early Chinese agriculture made it clear that there were primarily two subcenters of the origin within China (Ho 1977; An 1989; Yan 1992; Zhao 2005a; Bellwood 2005; Jones and Liu 2009), one in the middle and lower Yangze River area where rice agriculture was first developed, with rice (Oryza sativa) as the major cultivar, and the other in North China along the Yellow River areas where the origin of dry-land agriculture is centered, with foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) as the most representative crops. Recent study suggests that there is a third important area that deserves thorough investigation regarding the origin of agriculture in China. It is the southernmost part of China along the Zhujiang River areas, where the major crops of early farming seem to have been ro
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