Early Subsistence Practices at Prehistoric Dadunzi in Yuanmou, Yunnan: New Evidence for the Origins of Early Agriculture in Southwest China

Summary

In 2010, flotation work was carried out at the site of Dadunzi in the Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Zone. A number of crops were recovered from this work including: foxtail millet, broomcorn millet and rice, as well as weeds originating from both fields and the natural environment. The results of the flotation show that at 4000 BP, that the Yuanmou site had already entered a phase of agricultural production and the majority of the diet of the inhabitants of this site came from these three crops. Agriculture at Dadunzi appears to have been of a mixed strategy of both upland dry field and wetland agriculture. Upland agriculture originated from Northwest China, while rice agriculture on the other hand is hypothesized to have entered this region from areas to the east and slightly north.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Recent Advances in the Settlement and Landscape Archaeology of Southwest China and Southeast Asia Part I: The Macro Perspective: Spatial Analysis and Subsistence Systems

Keywords

Spatial Coverage