An Overview of Technological Changes in the Pottery of the Early Holocene Shangshan Culture, Zhejiang Province, China

Summary

This paper will outline diachronic trends in pottery technology and subsistence practices of the early Holocene Shangshan culture (11,400 to 8400 cal. BP) in the lower Yangtze Valley, China. It is hypothesized that Shangshan peoples engaged in low-level production of rice and began the process of bringing this crucial cereal under domestication. Early Shangshan pottery was tempered with rice leaves, stems and chaff, and is the earliest known Chinese pottery tempered with dry organic material and the earliest known fine ware. Later in the Shangshan sequence, there was a shift to pottery tempered with non-organic materials. We are exploring the relationship between changes in Shangshan pottery technology, culinary practices, and the emergence of rice cultivation as factors in the complex human-environmental interaction that occurred in the lower Yangtze Valley after 12,000 years ago.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage