A Glimpse of Rice Exploitation at Mojiaoshan Site, Liangzhu Culture: Archaeobotany and Rice Charring Experiment

Summary

Located at the Lower Yangtze River, China, Mojiaoshan Site is a 'palace' and center of Liangzhu Culture. On the edge of the Mojiaoshan platform, a waste accumulation of rice (H11) was found in recent years. Based on the archaeobotanic remains from this accumulation, this paper tries to preliminarily discuss the rice exploitation at Mojiaoshan Site. By conducting a charring experiment aiming to distinguish the rice broken before charring from rice broken after charring, the research tried to identify rice-processing stages in the charred materials. The result shows that most rice recovered from Mojiaoshan site was rice charred with husk (Oryza sativa Subsp. Japonica Temperate japonica group (syn. sinica)) and Liangzhu people were likely to adopt an early harvesting strategy to optimize the yield of rice. Also, rice in Mojiaoshan site was threshed, winnowed, sieved and stored under a clean state. The exploitation of rice provides a solid foundation for the development of Liangzhu culture and also reflects the highly complexity of Liangzhu Culture.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Advances in Archaeology of Prehistoric and Early China

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16538