Pottery lipid analysis at the Shangzhai site,Beijing,and its implication for subsistence strategy

As the crossroads of prehistoric cultures,the Beijing region is an important area for studying the exchange of prehistoric culture and the spread of millet agriculture.Although millet remains have been found in the Donghulin site during the Early Neolithic Age,there is little millet remains during the Middle and Late Neolithic Age,so there is a gap of approximately2,000 years since the time of the Donghulin site.The Shangzhai site is located in the Pinggu Basin in eastern Beijing,and it has a large time span with sequential strata;however,there are few large animals and plant remains found at this site,thus the subsistence strategy of ancient people remains unclear.In this study,the absorbed lipids of pottery sherds unearthed in the Neolithic cultural layer of the Shangzhai site were extracted and analysed.The results show that these potteries were used to process millet,the meat of terrestrial non-ruminants and wild ruminants,and dairy of wild ruminants,providing new insights for the subsistence strategy and the development of millet agriculture in the Middle and Late Neolithic Age of Beijing.In addition,the food processing in pottery may be an internal heating method,such as stone boiling.

Middle Holocene hunting-gathering culture and environmental background of the steppe area of northern China

For a long time,the academic community has known very little about hunter-gatherers in the steppe area of northern China in the mid-Holocene.This article reports on the Ula Usu West site in Siziwangqi Banner,Inner Mongolia,including basic information about the site,animal bones,lithic artifacts and the environmental background.The age of the site is 4.8–4.4 cal.kyr BP,placing it in the Late Neolithic period.Considering integrated evidence from flotation,zooarchaeology,ZooMS analysis and lithic artifacts,the preliminary inference is that the population lived in a hunting-gathering economy.They used lithic tools represented by arrowheads to hunt mainly Antilopinae animals(e.g.,Procapra gutturosa).Pollen analysis suggests that the climate was relatively humid,providing advantageous living conditions for the population.The climate evidence is consistent with a warm event at approximately 4.7 kyr BP.A dry-cold event(4.5–4.0 kyr BP)and the gradual expansion of agriculture and breeding might have resulted in the final decline of the population.This article provides new materials for research on the“last”hunter-gatherers in the steppe area of northern China.

Excavation at Hanjing site yields evidence of early rice cultivation in the Huai River more than 8000 years ago

Through the analysis of macro-and micro-plant remains,food residues and the rice-field like features from the mid-Neolithic site of Hanjing in the Huai River region,we propose an early beginning of rice cultivation at Hanjing.The presence of non-shattering rice spikelet bases and the increasing percentages of rice phytoliths confirm the appearance of domesticated rice in the Hanjing archaeobotanical assemblage.However,as indicated by the different prediction rates of rice domestication shown by morphometric of the double-peaked Oryza-type glum cells and fish-scale decorations on the Oryza-type bulliform cells from different cultural phases before 7,000 a BP,rice cultivation was at an early stage of development.Our findings provide new and significant evidence towards the establishment of the Huai River as another important center for early rice cultivation and domestication in prehistoric China.