Human diets, crop patterns, and settlement hierarchies in third millennium BC China: Bioarchaeological perspectives in Zhengluo region

Abstract

Understanding the interplay between subsistence strategies and settlement patterns is fundamental for understanding past social-economic and cultural changes. Around the third millennium BC in the Zhengluo region of China, settlement hierarchies with two or three -tiered settlements were established. However, the detailed economic dynamics of settlement stratification in this area have not yet been clearly illustrated. In this paper, we report the new human isotopic data and archaeobotanical evidences with radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites of different scales in the Zhengluo region. The primary objective is to further assess the manner in which human populations among different scales of settlements in the Zhengluo region organized their subsistence strategies during the late Yangshao period (around 3500BC-2600BCE) by combining these new data with previous archaeological studies.Mixed crop cultivation including millet crops and non-millet crops (rice and/or soybean) was a stable agricultural pattern in center settlements, and pure millet agricultural only appeared in ordinary settlements. Meanwhile, human dietary patterns from center settlements were more diversified compared with the homogenous diets among inhabitants of the ordinary settlements. The distinct human dietary patterns at these two different types of sites results from and reflect their different responses of subsistence strategies to social dynamics. As settlements expanded and populations increased, stable millet cultivation guaranteed the essential food supply, and that the popularization of rice (a crop from the South) and the adoption of a new crop, soybeans, could diversify the agricultural patterns, expand the food supply and reduce the risks associated with food production in center settlements. Meanwhile, ordinary settlements still persisted with a more conservative subsistence strategy focused on millet agriculture. The different and successful coping strategies by late Yangshao inhabitants in Zhengluo region were the driving force in the emergence of the episode of peak social development in this area and likely important for populations and settlements in the following revolutionary periods “Longshan-Erlitou” in the same area.