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The vast Dongting Lake in the middle Yangtze River basin, China, was occupied by Chinese Neolithic settlements starting 10 000 years ago, and rice cultivation there is probably the earliest in the world. The numerous Neolithic settlements identified by previous archaeological surveys represent the five major Neolithic cultural stages, i.e. the Pengtoushan (9000–7900 cal. yr BP), Zaoshixiaceng (7900–6800 cal. yr BP), Daxi (6800–5500 cal. yr BP), Qujialing (5500–5000 cal. yr BP), and Shijiahe (5000–4000 cal. yr BP). Using sedimentological and geoarchaeological approaches, this paper analyses the drivers of basin-scale settlement relocation in relation to lake-level fluctuations and monsoon climate variations in the Holocene. The relocation of Neolithic sites around the lake shoreline and on the adjacent floodplain, together with radiocarbon-dated stratigraphy, clearly indicates that the shape of the lake basin was an incised and elongated valley occupied by a lake in the early Holocene, which became a broader and shallower depression in the mid to late Holocene. The established lowest habitable base of the settlements positioned on the lake shore assists reconstruction of the change in lake level from 22 m at 9000 cal. yr BP to 26 m at 5500–4000 cal. yr BP, although higher and lower lake levels occurred during the intervening cultural stages. The pollen spectra reveal a warming trend throughout the Holocene with at least four major temperature cycles, driven by monsoon variations between temperate- and warm-humid conditions. In the early Holocene the climate changed from cool-dry to warm-humid, and this played a key role in developing the earliest Pengtoushan culture in the region. Subsequent climate fluctuations fit well with the advance and retreat of the lake shore, also coevally with Neolithic site movements in the lake region. In this study we show how geoarchaeological evidence can be used in environmental reconstruction during the Holocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response, both to Fuller et al.'s recent criticism of Chinese research on rice domestication, as lacking evidence, and to their argument for the beginning of rice domestication around 4000 BC in the lower Yangzi River. We first survey previous publications that discuss the process from wild rice collection to rice domestication in China, and then examine early rice remains from the perspectives of rice morphology and archaeological context. We focus on three aspects: the timing of the initial rice domestication in the Yangzi River region; the earliest presence of domesticated rice in the Lower Yangzi and Huai River regions; and the implications of changes in rice grain sizes in archaeological assemblages. We also discuss problems relating to the presence of immature rice remains in the archaeological record, grain size increase and overall grain shape, which are three of the criteria used by Fuller et al. for distinguishing domesticated from wild rice. Based on published data and our research on rice, we demonstrate that by the early Holocene (9000 cal. BP), Neolithic people in both north and south China may have been harvesting wild rice and initiating rice cultivation that eventually led to domestication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lower Yangtze, eastern China, was colonized by several Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures giving rise to possibly the highest concentration of prehistoric sites in the world. Early Neolithic cultures in the delta region cultivated rice (Oryza sativa) and agricultural developments appear to have occurred throughout the Neolithic with abrupt socio-economic changes possibly associated with the terminal Neolithic. Given the extensive history of environmental exploitation and well-preserved archaeological sites, the Yangtze delta is an ideal setting to explore the complex interactions between humans and their environment. Multiproxies of environmental changes, namely pollen, charcoal and phytoliths, in a 14C AMS-dated sequence of sediments from an exposed profile at Qingpu, Yangtze delta, were investigated. 14C AMS dating indicates that the age range of the sedimentary sequence analysed is from c. 1800 to 6000 BP, and therefore encompasses the terminal Neolithic and subsequent Bronze Age in the region. This paper reviews this sediment-based evidence in the light of current understanding of human-environment interactions during a critical phase of the development of the Yangtze delta and associated human cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]