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Site of Baodun yields earliest evidence for the spread of rice and foxtail millet agriculture to south-west China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Jade d'Alpoim Guedes ,
Ming Jiang ,
Kunyu He ,
Xiaohong Wu  and
Zhanghua Jiang
Jade d'Alpoim Guedes
Affiliation:
1Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA (Email: [email protected]; author for correspondence)
Ming Jiang
Affiliation:
2Chengdu City Institute of Archaeology, 18 Shi'erqiao Lu, Chengdu 610072, China
Kunyu He
Affiliation:
2Chengdu City Institute of Archaeology, 18 Shi'erqiao Lu, Chengdu 610072, China
Xiaohong Wu
Affiliation:
3Department of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University, 5 Yiheyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
Zhanghua Jiang
Affiliation:
2Chengdu City Institute of Archaeology, 18 Shi'erqiao Lu, Chengdu 610072, China
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Abstract

The Chengdu plain of south-west China lies outside the main centres of early domestication in the Huanghe and Yangzi valleys, but its importance in Chinese prehistory is demonstrated by the spectacular Sanxingdui bronzes of the second millennium BC and by the number of walled enclosures of the third millennium BC associated with the Baodun culture. The latter illustrate the development of social complexity. Paradoxically, however, these are not the outcome of a long settled agricultural history but appear to be associated with the movement of the first farming communities into this region. Recent excavations at the Baodun type site have recovered plant remains indicating not only the importance of rice cultivation, but also the role played by millet in the economy of these and other sites in south-west China. Rice cultivation in paddy fields was supplemented by millet cultivation in neighbouring uplands. Together they illustrate how farmers moving into this area from the Middle Yangzi adjusted their cultivation practices to adapt to their newly colonised territories.

Keywords

ChinaSichuanBaodunthird millennium BCricefoxtail milletspread of agriculture
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 87 , Issue 337 , September 2013 , pp. 758 - 771
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2013

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