The mechanisms of the origin and dispersal of millet agriculture in northern China are poorly understood. We used plant macroremains, stable isotope compositions of human bone collagen, and pollen records from the Sitai site to reconstruct changes in subsistence strategies and their relationship with the ecological environment from the early to middle Holocene on the Inner Mongolian Plateau in northern China. Charred weed-like seeds, the bones of small mammals, eggshell fragments, together with microliths, indicate the practice of hunter-gatherer subsistence strategies during 10,500–10,200 cal yr BP. Deciduous broadleaved forest-steppe vegetation was present around the Sitai site during the early middle Holocene (8000–7000 cal yr BP). Additionally, isotopic compositions of human bones and plant remains reveal that millet agriculture and hunting-gathering appeared in the early middle Holocene. The spread of millet agriculture on the Inner Mongolian Plateau was likely favored by an increase in precipitation between 8000 and 7000 cal yr BP. The development of millet agriculture on the Inner Mongolia Plateau and the Loess Plateau was the prelude to its subsequent spread to the Tibet Plateau.

The oasis villages of the Tarim Basin served as hubs along the ancient Silk Road, and they played an important role in facilitating communication between the imperial centers of Asia. These villages were supported by an irrigated form of cereal farming that was specifically adapted to these early oasis settlements. In this manuscript, we present the results from new archaeobotanical analyses, radiocarbon dating, and organic carbon isotopic studies directly from carbonized seeds at the Wupaer site (1500–400 BC) in the Kashgar Oasis of the western Tarim Basin. Our results showed that early farming in the oasis relied on a mixed wheat and barley system, but after 1200 BC was intensified through more elaborate irrigation, the introduction of more water-demanding legumes, and possibly a greater reliance on free-threshing wheat. These crops and the knowledge of irrigated farming likely dispersed into the Tarim Basin through the mountains from southern Central Asia. Improved agricultural productivity in the Tarim Basin may also have led to demographic and socio-political shifts and fed into the increased exchange that is colloquially referred to as the Silk Road.

We present new radiocarbon dating, pollen and microcharcoal date from a section at a well-known early Neo-lithic site, Chahai, in Northeast China, to reconstruct vegetation and human occupation history and to evaluate human influence on the regional vegetation. The results suggested that the site was occupied in at least four main stages, 12,700-12,570, 10,200-9300, 7200-6300 and 2070-1920 cal yr BP, and that the periodic occupation and abandonment of the Chahai site was probably related to global millennial scale climate change. The regional vegetation change in Chahai region showed an increasing trend in humidity from the final Pleistocene to the middle Holocene; the vegetation was successively dominated by an arid steppe (12,700-12,570 cal yr BP) and moist meadow (10,200-9300 and 7200-6300 cal yr BP). Nevertheless, the reduction of the regional forest cover, indicated by a decrease in the proportion of tree pollen, was synchronous with population expansion locally around 7200-6300 cal yr BP. Our results demonstrate that the vegetation succession in the Chahai region was mainly controlled by climate change in the final Pleistocene and the early Holocene (12,700-12,570 and 10,200-9300 cal yr BP), while increased human activities and agricultural behavior played major roles in the degradation of the regional forest during the middle Holocene (7200-6300 cal yr BP). (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Wheat and barley evolved from large-seeded annual grasses in the arid, low latitudes of Asia; their spread into higher elevations and northern latitudes involved corresponding evolutionary adaptations in these plants, including traits for frost tolerance and shifts in photoperiod sensitivity. The adaptation of farming populations to these northern latitudes was also a complex and poorly understood process that included changes in cultivation practices and the varieties of crops grown. In this article, we push back the earliest dates for the spread of wheat and barley into northern regions of Asia as well as providing earlier cultural links between East and West Asia. The archaeobotanical, palynological and anthracological data we present come from the Tongtian Cave site in the Altai Mountains, with a punctuated occupation dating between 5,200 and 3,200 calibrated years bp , coinciding with global cooling of the middle–late Holocene transition. These early low-investment agropastoral populations in the north steppe area played a major role in the prehistoric trans-Eurasian exchange.

Based on identification of fossil charcoals from 11 sites in the Hexi Corridor, we reconstruct the local vegetation community and human impact on it in the period from 4300 to 2400 cal. yr BP. More than 20 broadleaved taxa and 4 coniferous trees are present. The charcoal identifications show that vegetation in the period 4300–2400 cal. yr BP differed regionally because of variations in local topography and water supply, with limited diversity in the northwest Hexi Corridor and relatively rich diversity in the southeast area. In the northwest Hexi Corridor, the oasis woodland consisted mainly of Tamarix sp., Salix sp., and Populus sp. In the southeast region, the vegetation was a mix of coniferous forest and broadleaf woodland. By comparison with modern patterns of vegetation, broadleaf trees were much more abundant and the spruce forest extended down to relatively low altitudes, suggesting greater vegetation cover and richer diversity than today. There was also temporal variation. In the period from 4300 to 4000 cal. yr BP, woodland was relatively scarce, while the greatest diversity of plants appears in the period from 4000 to 3500 cal. yr BP, probably because of better moisture conditions at that time. After 3500 cal. yr BP, there was the appearance of woodland dominated by Morus alba, suggesting that cultivated trees may have played a key role in the lives of local people.

The reconstruction of fruit collection and cultivation based on plant remains plays an important role in understanding the subsistence strategies of ancient societies. Here, we report the identification of fossil charcoal from eight sites in the Hexi Corridor to give a clue to the early exploitation of fruit resources in the period 2300–400 bc. Charcoal assemblages show that millet farmers may have collected some tree fruits including bird cherry (Padus sp.), pear (Pyrus sp.) and whitebeam (Sorbus sp.) in the period 2300–2000 bc. From 2000 to 1500 bc there was continuing utilization of Padus sp., Sorbus sp. and cotoneaster (Cotoneaster sp.), at a time when cereal agriculture of wheat and barley had been introduced from outside. Based on analysis of ecological distribution, reproductive biology and the history of utilization, we infer that these fruits were gathered from the wild rather than cultivated. Later, the cultivation of non-native mulberry (Morus alba) began around 1500 bc in the context of an established high-yield wheat agriculture, probably indicating the earliest sign of horticulture in the Hexi Corridor. As with the beginning of agriculture, the horticulture is associated with cultivation of non-native species. In short, the variations in the presence of charred wood of fruit trees indicate that people might have collected wild fruits over a period of time, and that horticulture occurred much later than the spread of a variety of cereal and other crops in the Hexi Corridor.

The economy of the Western Tianshan Mountains from prehistory to present has been almost exclusively focused on transhumant pastoralism. Settlement sites are located in a variety of different ecological zones, but the location does not always provide a clear indication of the original season of occupation. Other tools for identifying seasonality of occupation for prehistoric pastoral sites presently rely largely on analysis of faunal and botanical data which may produce ambiguous results. In this paper we correlate an ethnographic study based on data from local informants with a NDVI-based model on vegetation cycles to analyze why and how modern herders in the Western Tianshan select their range lands, and whether these patterns are applicable to Bronze Age land use in the same region. Micro-climates play an important role in the choice of optimal locations for any given season, and despite small climatic fluctuations the data strongly suggest that the seasonality of the Bronze Age sites in the Bortala (Bo'ertala) Valley can be correlated with modern land use. Thus pasture analysis applied to the location of prehistoric sites in the Tianshan can provide significant insights on seasonal use.

Previous geochemical studies of volcanic glass artifacts dating to the Late Palaeolithic in northeast Asia have revealed a wide distribution of artifacts from sources in China, Korea, and Far East Russia. Through an analysis of lithic technology, this study sheds new light on the variety and complexity of the social, technological, and landscape factors that shaped the long distance movement of stone artifacts.

Little is known about the diversity of volcanic glass sources used in prehistoric northeast China. Although preliminary research established the presence of a number of sources in archaeological sites from this area, the exact location of these sources was not known (jia et al., 2010). A recent geoarchaeological survey of three source areas and new data derived from portable X-ray Fluorescence elemental analysis (pXRF) has revealed not only the location and use of two new geological sources in northeast China but also extended our understanding of the geologic context of volcanic glass from Tianchi/Paektusan Volcano, the major geological source of volcanic glass in northeast China. Furthermore, understanding the geological history of these new sources clarifies why they were only found in archaeological sites dated to the Holocene. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Environmental archaeology in northeastern China has reached a critical period of development, although the state of progress varies across this large geographical region. The lack of collaboration between archaeologists and associated scientists remains the main obstacle in current research. Almost exclusively conducted by dedicated scientists, research in the field is often ignored by archaeologists because it is not presented within an archaeological context. Furthermore, the research is not of a high spatial and temporal resolution: there is the tendency to make broad generalizations about large regions over long periods of time and to disregard areas that do not fit their general climatic models. Another problem is the misguided borrowing of concepts developed in other parts of the world, for example, the Holocene Climate Optimum (HCO), which is well defined in prehistoric Europe but is still being developed in China. Many researchers have simply applied this term to the same period in China and assumed that the climate around that period resembled that of prehistoric Europe, despite the fact that this is currently unsupported by local palaeo-environmental evidence. Other obstacles to the development of environmental archaeology include deterministic approaches and oversimplistic research procedures. To address these problems, a conversion of qualitative data to quantitative data on temperature and precipitation is required. Future research should be conducted by teams of scientists and archaeologists working collaboratively on both natural and archaeological deposits, in order to establish a strong foundation for further environmental reconstruction research.

Recent studies have highlighted the long-distance transport of obsidian from the Paektusan (Tianchi or Baitoushan in Chinese) volcano on the border between China and North Korea to eastern Russia and Korea, but little is known about the role of the local population in the production and movement or exchange of this important raw material. This paper addresses this data lacuna by presenting sourcing results of 440 artifacts from 18 Late Paleolithic sites located in northeast China. A portable XRF enabled rapid non-destructive characterization of samples. The results show that although Paektusan obsidian was widely transported throughout northeast Asia, material from at least three other sources was also used. In particular, we highlight the significance of basaltic glass artifacts with the same geochemistry as sources found in the Primorye region of Far East Russia in sites from northeast China. This result indicates a two-way movement of volcanic glass artifacts between Primorye and the northeast of China rather than a unidirectional long-distance exchange system originating from Paektusan Volcano.