Phytoliths and rice: from wet to dry and back again in the Neolithic Lower Yangtze

作者：Weisskopf Alison^*; Qin Ling; Ding Jinglong; Ding Pin; Sun Guoping; Fuller Dorian Q

来源：Antiquity, 2015, 89(347): 1051-1063.

DOI：10.15184/aqy.2015.94

• China
• Neolithic
• cultivation
• archaeobotany
• irrigation
• ecology

The cultivation of rice has had a major impact on both societies and their environments in Asia, and in China in particular. Phytolith assemblages from three Neolithic sites in the Lower Yangtze valley reveal that in early rice fields the emphasis was on drainage to limit the amount of water and force the rice to produce seed. It was only in the later third millennium BC that the strategy changed and irrigated paddies came into use. The results demonstrate that plant remains, including weed assemblages, can reveal wetter or drier growing conditions, showing changes in rice cultivation from flooded and drained fields to large, intensively irrigated paddies.

• 出版日期2015-10
• 单位浙江省文物考古研究所; 北京大学