Behavioral ecology of Neolithic transformations in Taiwan: Ceramics and settlements

Summary

Six thousand years ago, encounters between Paleolithic Taiwanese foragers and seafaring farmers of Mainland China ushered in a new agricultural lifeway. Two hallmarks of the early Taiwanese Neolithic are sedentary settlements and red cord-marked ceramic wares. How quickly did foragers adopt these cultural traits? Did they adopt them together or separately? Archaeological data from the Neolithic transition are scarce, but ethnographic information suggests that the rate of change is affected by considerations of costs and benefits compared to the existing lifeway. This paper uses projections from Lewis Binford’s Hunter-Gatherer database to offers hypothetical predictions for mobility and subsistence of Taiwan’s Paleolithic foragers, and the tempo and mode of adoption of ceramic technology and sedentized living.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Archaeology of Cultural Fluidity in Taiwan

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 13245