Investigating the Pottery Use of Neolithic Ceramics from Guijiabao in Southwest China Using Organic Residue Analysis

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Guijiabao is an archaeological site in southwest China that dates from the Neolithic to the historical period. Its crucial location at the interaction of the Henduan Mountains and the Sichuan Basin offers a unique opportunity to study the southward spread of new crops and species into this region. Although it is widely accepted that mixed farming of rice/millet was introduced into southwest China around 4700 BP, it is still unclear how much the new crops or animals were utilized throughout the Neolithic transition. To better understand the culinary practices associated with the early development of agriculture, we examined organic residues preserved in Guijiabao pottery using residue analysis approaches. Our results suggest that terrestrial animals, such as ruminants, predominated in the Neolithic samples, with one potsherd showing a C3 plant source. The findings indicate that rather than widely adopting farming practices, the residents of Guijiabao might have relied mainly on wild animal hunting, supplemented by rice/millet farming. This might be a subsistence strategy used in the highlands of this area. Our future work will include a comparison with faunal remains and pottery samples across different types of pottery and temporal phases to have a clearer picture of the local subsistence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40058.0