Feeding Shimao: Archaeobotanical and Isotopic Investigation into Early Urbanism (4200-3000 BP) on the Northern Loess Plateau, China

Pengfei Sheng, Xue Shang, Xinying Zhou, Michael Storozum, Liping Yang, Xiaoning Guo, Pengcheng Zhang, Zhanwei Sun, Songmei Hu, Zhouyong Sun and Yaowu Hu

Environmental Archaeology, 2024, vol. 29, issue 5, 425-439

Abstract: Renewed excavations at Shimao, the largest stone walled urban site in northern China dating to around 4200–3700 BP, have focused on Shimao’s unusual architecture and material culture, but there remains much to be known about the subsistence system and agricultural strategies the inhabitants employed around this site. In this paper we provide new archaeobotanical and isotopic evidence for the agricultural systems and strategies that supported Shimao and nearby sites, from 5000 to 3000 BP. Our data show that the system gradually shifted from one based on common millet as the main staple—requiring a high level of labour-input—to a system dependent on extensive cultivation of foxtail millet, which is better suited to dryland cultivation in colder environments. We argue that this shift in cultivation coincided with regional climate change, and helped sustain early Bronze Age state societies, which fuelled the rapid emergence of social complexity in the semi-arid and arid area of the northern Loess Plateau from 4200 to 3000 BP.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14614103.2021.2009995 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:yenvxx:v:29:y:2024:i:5:p:425-439

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/yenv20

DOI: 10.1080/14614103.2021.2009995

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental Archaeology is currently edited by Tim Mighall

More articles in Environmental Archaeology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().