The origin of rice agriculture in the Lower Yangtze Valley, China
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The transition to agriculture is one of the most consequential events in human history. Rice agriculture is known to have originated from the Lower Yangtze River, but despite more than two decades of extensive studies, how and why rice first became domesticated remain unclear. Traditional theories tend to consider the transition as a result of resource stress, but recent archaeological data indicate no such evidence in this area. This dissertation provides a new approach to explain this phenomenon. Data for this research come from two sources: 1) a review of published materials of excavated sites dating to the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in China, and 2) a residue (starch and phytolith) and use-wear study on a total of 142 ceramic and stone artifacts from the Shangshan culture (11,400 -- 8,600 BP). Based on my analysis, I propose that the agricultural transition was a two-stage process, the first stage involving the self-domestication of humans and the second stage featuring human domestication of other species. The first stage began around the terminal Pleistocene (ca. 30,000-11,700 BP), when humans invented a diversified array of technologies (e.g. grinding stone, pottery, polished stones). These new technologies enabled humans to exploit more wild foods but also physically and culturally "domesticated" them, creating an irreversible reliance on external tools. The second stage arose in the warming climate of the early Holocene, when humans began a "mass production" of their Pleistocene innovations in order to process newly abundant plant resources, especially acorns. The physicality of tools and plants further tied people to specific locales and allowed them to experiment with plant cultivation. In the Lower Yangtze River, rice domestication occurred as an unintended consequence. Initially, rice was used as an important pottery temper and a minor food supplement; later a series of intensification events transformed the crop into a common staple food. Taken together, these conclusions depart from the anthropocentric approaches that consider plant domestication as a human strategy to produce sustenance. Instead, this research emphasizes how the active agencies of plants and tools resulted in the domestication of humans by eventually "trapping" them into a sedentary farming life with labor-demanding activities.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Wang, Jiajing |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Liu, Li, 1953 December 12- |
| Thesis advisor | Liu, Li, 1953 December 12- |
| Thesis advisor | Bauer, Andrew M |
| Thesis advisor | Hodder, Ian |
| Degree committee member | Bauer, Andrew M |
| Degree committee member | Hodder, Ian |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Jiajing Wang. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Jiajing Wang
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