In the latest Antiquity Kidder, Liu and Li report on Sanyanzhuang, a settlement buried by catastrophic Yellow River floods around AD 23. This is a essentially a central Chinese Pompeii but without the burning. So far little of the settlement occupation area has been excavated but it appears that field systems around the site were preserved as well. Some exceptional preservation includes leaf megafossils (leaf casts), in this case of mulberry and elm trees. The report is basically descriptive and notes sampling for pollen. One can hope that in the future systematic flotation and phytolith sampling will be carried out, because a site like this provides an amazing opportunity to ground truth the reliability and biases of the (limited) textual sources on Han agriculture. Despite the fact that written sources refer to "row crop cultivation" (p. 46), as found here.
Some thoughts on recent publications in archaeobotany and agricultural origins. Opinions and views on the evolution and history of crops. Memorials of archaeobotanists we have lost. The author's research has previously been supported by grants from the ERC and NERC.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
It’s with great sadness we bring you the news that Gordon Hillman died on Sunday 1 st July. He is survived by his daughter Thilaka, and ...
-
The early history of Citrus fruits in the Mediterranean has been an active area of discussion amongst archaeobotanists, historians and ...
-
Many have been excited this week about headlines claiming marijuana (Cannabis) was domestication in China 12,000 years (making it the first ...
-
The extensive set of direct dates, on the largest early assemblage of wheat and barley in China, provides important new evidence on the arri...
-
wild Gallus gallus spadiceus The past week saw the publication of a landmark genomic study on chickens ( Wang et al 2020, Cell Researc...
-
The spread of agriculture to Egypt presents a number of contrasts from that in Europe of east of the Fertile Crescent. For one thing it seem...
No comments:
Post a Comment