考古遗址中家鸡骨骼的辨识

Identification of Domestic Chicken Bones in Archaeological Sites

前言据统计仅以2011年为例,全球大约有581亿只鸡被消费[1]。作为世界人均消耗量第一的动物,家鸡(Gallus gallus domesticus )与人类关系之密切,不言而喻。而在漫长的家禽饲养史中,人类对家鸡的利用甚至依赖,应当是一个逐渐深入的过程。这其中首先被关注的,自然是家鸡源起于何时又驯化于何地。自20世纪80年代以来,伴随着考古材料的不断出土,关注点开始自印度河流域向中国华北地区一路北移[2],时间更一度推进至距今万年左右。

In recent years, along with the participation of genetics and other disciplines, the dispute on the origin of domestic chicken is raised again. As the resource of primary data, archaeology plays extremely important role in this dispute. Considering this status, this paper plans to establish a set of bone morphological identification standards for the domestic chicken bones unearthed at the archaeological remains starting with the bone morphology which is the most basic but also the least studied. By this set of standards, the authors of this paper reanalyze the available chicken bone materials and the relevant pictorial and textual materials about the candidates of domestic chicken mentioned by previous scholars. The results show that in the remains of the early and mid Holocene within China, no confirmed domestic chicken bones have been found to date;meanwhile, no substantial archaeological evidence to support China as the earliest place of origin of domestic chicken. In the future, anyone wants to propel the study on the origin of domestic chicken, the archaeological background should be the first to fully respect;only the continuing scientific analyses and exploration on the origin of domestic chicken based on scientific morphological identification are the most convincing.