The Beixin Culture: archaeobotanical evidence for a population dispersal of Neolithic hunter-gatherer-cultivators in northern China

Songtao Chen,Guiyun Jin,Hui Li,Aiguo Yang,Steven Mithen,Xianjun Fan

doi:10.15184/aqy.2020.63

Abstract

According to the ‘farming/dispersal’ hypothesis, the Early and Mid-Holocene spread of Neolithic material culture in East Asia would have arisen from dispersals of established farming populations. The authors test this hypothesis by considering the Beixin Culture that appeared in the south-west Haidai region of northern China c. 5000 BC, before spreading north and east to the coast over the subsequent millennium. While this culture had architecture, elaborate pottery and other forms of Neolithic material culture, analysis of archaeobotanical evidence from Guanqiaocunnan (4340–3970 BC) suggests an economic base of hunting, gathering and cultivating, rather than a reliance on farming.

Highlights

The origins and development of Neolithic economies and cultures in China are complex and diverse—understandably so in such a geographically vast and varied landmass
Considering the influence of the Mid-Holocene climatic optimum, we suggest that the latitude difference between Guanqiaocunnan and Caoxieshan hardly affects our comparison
The Beixin still made substantial use of wild plants and animals, as evidenced by both Guanqiaocunnan and Beiqian, suggesting that this mixed economy was characteristic of the Beixin Culture as a whole

Summary

Introduction

The origins and development of Neolithic economies and cultures in China are complex and diverse—understandably so in such a geographically vast and varied landmass. Jiao (2016) interprets this evidence as representing low-level food production, involving limited cereal cultivation and broad-spectrum gathering Such a mixed economy could, attest a specific coastal adaptation that is unrepresentative of the Beixin Culture settlements to the south and north of the Tai-Yi Mountains. At the site of Yuhuazhai, for example, plant remains suggest a mixed economy of cultivation and wild plant exploitation (Zhao 2017), but both the diversity and the percentage of edible wild plants—especially the nuts and fruit—are much lower than at Guanqiacunnan This comparison cannot be developed due to the lack of a published ubiquity analysis or cultural contexts for the Yuhuazhai plant remains. The fully developed farming economies of the Late Dawenkou and Longshan Cultures in the Haidai region had shifted to cultivating the more productive foxtail millet (He et al 2017), and provide extensive evidence for storage (The Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 1988). Is required to demonstrate the practice of storage within the Beixin Culture

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion