Ecology and hydrology of early rice farming: geoarchaeological and palaeo-ecological evidence from the Late Holocene paddy field site at Maoshan, the Lower Yangtze

Abstract

The well-preserved Maoshan paddy fields (4700-4300 BP) were built on an intermediate landscape between the foothills and alluvial plain of the Lower Yangtze River. Despite several interdisciplinary research, there has been a lack of detailed environmental and ecological data to contextualise the reconstructed rice farming practices within a wider paleo-environmental background. Our research provides key information on the chronology, vegetation, and long-term hydrological fluctuations at and surrounding the paddy fields. Our 14C and OSL dates show that the initial occupation began at around 5740 ± 140 cal. BP, and the paddy fields were built at around 4675 ± 145 cal. BP and were in use continuously until around 4000 cal. BP. Our pollen, diatom and phytolith data shows that whilst the vegetation in the field was sensitive to changes caused by water management and rice farming, the ecological system surrounding the fields was relatively stable. We suggest that this high frequency of in-field vegetation changes was closely related to intensifying water management for rice farming. This thesis is supported by our geophysical and geochemical analyses of bulk sediments, which shows that the steady build-up of the alluvial sequence was punctuated by several short-term episodes of high-energy surface runoff, including strong flushing in of sandy sediments into the fields perhaps through irrigation activities. Our paleo-ecological and geoarchaeological investigation at Maoshan permits an overview of the development of rice farming and intensifying water management practices in a wider environmental context and offers significant insights to the ongoing debate on the wet-dry dichotomy of early rice farming.

Synthesis of stable isotopic data for human bone collagen: A study of the broad dietary patterns across ancient China

“…Further development of rice cultivation happened at the sites of Hemudu (5118–3762 BCE), Tianluoshan (ca. 5000–3000 BCE) and Liangzhu (3079–2521 BCE) in the lower Yangtze where it seems to have become the dominant staple crop (Fuller et al, 2009; Jin et al, 2019; Qin et al, 2009).…”

“…Further development of rice cultivation happened at the sites of Hemudu (5118-3762 BCE), Tianluoshan (ca. 5000-3000 BCE), and Liangzhu (3079-2521 BCE) in the lower Yangtze where it seems to have become the dominant staple crop (Fuller et al, 2009;Qin et al, 2009;Jin et al, 2019 westwards into Xinjiang and east into the Central Plains and Shandong. This has provoked sharp criticism by An and Barton (2013), concerning the provenance of the samples, the timing and routes of wheat, as well as wheat-millet interaction in Gansu.…”

Pollen and non-pollen palynomorph analyses of Upper Holocene sediments from Dianshan, Yangtze coastal lowlands, China: Hydrology, vegetation history and human activity

“…Also present in this limnic sediment of zone DS-c is the soil fungus Glomus (HdV-207), which suggests at least periodic erosion of destabilised soils into the water (van Geel, 1986;Marinova and Atanassova, 2006). High frequencies of Gloeotrichia may also be significant, as it is common in deepwater rice fields (Rother et al, 1988) (Okuda et al, 2003;Yi et al, 2003Yi et al, , 2006Shu et al, 2007;Lu et al, 2015;Jin et al, 2018;Zhao et al, 2018). The date of the Cruciferae peaks at Dianshan coincides with a major immigration of people from northern China to the…”

History of Mid- and Late Holocene Palaeofloods in the Yangtze Coastal Lowlands, East China: Evaluation of Non-Pollen Palynomorph Evidence, Review and Synthesis

“…Lithostratigraphic analyses can be highly diagnostic of overbank flood events with changes in the grain-size of minerogenic sediments, usually coarsening due to high discharge energy [39,45,119,[136][137][138][139][140][141][142][143][144][145][146], and exogenic clastic layers within organic sediment profiles indicating sudden changes in depositional regime [147][148][149]. Finer-grained, sorted and well-bedded layers often represent fluvial slackwater deposits [38,43,75,140,[150][151][152][153][154][155][156][157][158][159][160].…”