Culture prosperity of late longshan on north Shaanxi and its environmental background

Summary

The late Longshan culture of north Shaanxi was flouring, while that of the southern Inner Mongolia was declined and migrated to the south. Meanwhile, in Guanzhong Basin, the culture was also declined to the bottom. In this paper, we aimed to know the possible climatic factors drove the occurrence of these culture phenomena. A compile of Holocene climate records related to these three regions were collected and analyzed. The following results can be drawn: after 4.4 Ka BP, the climate of Inner Mongolia was becoming colder and drier which could not support the agriculture subsistence again and the people therefore migrated to the north Shaanxi along the Yellow River. Second, a generally drier and cooler climate with intermittent warmer, wetter conditions developed in north Shaanxi during the mid-fourth millennium BC. This short warm and wet event (4.0-3.8/3.7Ka BP) attributed the prosperity of late longshan culture at this region. While the climate of the Guanzhong Basin and the North China Plain was warm-humid and extreme flooding events occurred frequently. The spatial distribution of culture was limited by the frequent floods and there was obvious decrease of the site numbers. In conclusion, people made diverse response strategies corresponding to different environmental background.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From Foragers to Frontiers: Recent Research on the Archaeology of the Ordos Region, China   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15001