Settlement Patterns in the Taojiahu-Xiaocheng Region of Jianghan Plain China

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New Thoughts on Current Research in East Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The especially early emergence of Neolithic walled towns in the Jianghan Plain is widely used as an indicator of social complexity. Several models have been suggested to explain the emergence of walled towns: inter-regional conflicts between the Central Plain and the Jianghan Plain, intra-regional conflicts among walled towns in the Jianghan Plain, and control of flooding in the Neolithic period. The trajectories of developing social complexity of these earliest walled towns and the relationships that existed among them have not previously been systematically investigated from the perspective of demographic distributions. The full-coverage systematic regional survey presented here included two of the earliest walled towns in the Jianghan Plain: Taojiahu and Xiaocheng. It was designed to illuminate their social trajectories and by extension those of their counterparts elsewhere in the Jianghan Plain and areas adjacent to it. The regional survey revealed spatial and temporal variations in the survey area from 3900 BCE to 600 CE. Population distribution patterns were documented for each period in this time span to investigate the dynamic forces behind social and settlement changes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Thoughts on Current Research in East Asian Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25744