Beginnings in the south: early rice farmers of the Yangtze basin

It has been posited for some decades that rice farming (Figure 12.4) originated in the Yangtze basin. From the discovery during the 1970s excavations of substantial quantities of rice at the Neolithic waterlogged site of Hemudu (7,000-6,300 B P; Figure 12.5), to discoveries in the 1990s on middle Yangtze sites such as Pengtoushan and Bashidang, the Yangtze region has featured at the start of most accounts of rice origins.^[664] There has long been an archaeological

Figure 12.4 Rice field in Zhejiang province.

Figure 12.5 The Neolithic site of Hemudu.

and genetic case to be made for the separate origins of indica domesticated rice in India,^[665] although it now appears that distinct early cultivation practices in India were enhanced by hybridization with introduced domesticated rice forms from East Asia around 4,000 years ago.^[666]

Analyses of phytoliths recovered from Pleistocene caves on the southern margins of the Yangtze basin have also led to suggestions of Pleistocene rice domestication in the region,^[667] although clear criteria for determining either cultivation practices or morphological domestication of rice have been lack­ing. Instead what is evident is that, from 18,000 bp, mobile hunter-gatherer societies in the Yangtze region developed ceramics as a novel form of post­harvest food processing,^[668] with more sedentary forager villages occurring from around 9,000 bp. Although wild rice was present from at least 15,000 bp, it is unclear how significant this was for these hunter-gatherer systems. More recent improvements in archaeobotanical recovery have indicated that rice domestication was underway during, and only completed after, the Hemudu cultural phase in the lower Yangtze valley, i.e.

It has also become clear from recent archaeobotanical studies that rice cultivation emerged in the context of broad spectrum foraging focused on the collection of tree nuts, especially acorns of various oak species, and wetland nuts, especially water chestnuts (Trapa natans) and foxnuts (Euryale ferox). Besides gathering and storing these nuts, increasingly sedentary societies began to manage the shallow freshwater wetland margins for the production and planting of perennial wild rice (Oryza rufipogon sensu stricto). Freshwater fish were also heavily exploited in these environments. In the Hangzhou Bay region, the Kuahuqiao and Hemudu cultures had villages of post-built long- houses, suggestive of large extended household groups, continuing a tradi­tion already evident at the earlier sedentary forager village of Shangshan (10,000-8,500 bp). In the middle Yangtze Pengtoushan culture, houses included mainly large ovoid huts with sunken floors, perhaps for smaller groups. There were just a few rectilinear buildings, with rectilinear architecture becoming more standard during the subsequent Daxi period (6,500 years bp). Rice increasingly supplemented nuts and gradually displaced them as a dietary staple over the course of perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 years. During this same period rice evolved domestication traits - adaptations to being cultivated and harvested - including loss of wild-type seed dispersal, a key trait for documenting domes­tication archaeologically, but also increasing grain size and by inference such traits as closed panicles, increased seed number, erect growth habit, and increased annuality.

The growing quantity of archaeobotanical evidence, as well as sites with preserved field systems, allows the reconstruction of early cultivation sys­tems. Rice was initially managed along wetland margins that were expanded to control water depth, possibly through dry season burning and clearance as well as soil preparation. From the period at which rice remains display clear domestication traits, around 6,000 years ago, artificial field systems are evident, for example in the lower Yangtze region, east of Taihu Lake, at the sites of Chuodun and Caoxieshan.^[670] These early fields consisted of small dug-out, ovoid puddle fields in the order of 1-2 m in diameter (Figure 12.6). This technology indicates small-scale but intensive management of rice, in which soils could be fertilized, water readily drained, and harvests easily secured. This is also associated with smaller houses, perhaps indicative of nuclear families. At Chengtoushan in the middle Yangtze, features inter­preted as belonging to elongated fields following natural contours and defined by raised banks (c. 2.7 m wide and over 20 m long), in the context of associated archaeobotany, are suggestive of shallow-water, wet rice

Figure 12.6 Field systems at Chuodun, dating to 4000 cal bce.

cultivation.^[671] Houses were also elongated and rectangular, more permanent, and suggestive of larger households than those of earlier Bashidang and Pengtoushan.

By about 6,000 years ago (the Daxi period in the middle Yangtze and the late Majiabang in the lower Yangtze), domesticated rice had become established as the key dietary staple for Neolithic societies, and the basis in subsequent centuries for the emergence of increasing social complexity and population growth. In the middle Yangtze valley the increased productivity and reliance on rice supported the growth of population, as reflected in the scale of the third- millennium BCE settlements of the Qiujialing and Shijiahe cultures.

Figure 12.7 Paddy-field systems at Maoshan dating to 4700-4200 cal bce

square to rectilinear fields that could be irrigated from local streams (Figure 12.7). Pigs, melons, and bottle gourds are the only other clearly documented domesticates aside from rice. Cultivation of fruit trees like persimmon and peach, and fibre crops like ramie and mulberry for silk­worms, is also probable. The first preserved textiles come from Liangzhu contexts and indicate production of ramie and silk, but spindle whorls suggest that textile traditions extend back to the early rice cultivators of Kuahuqiao and Hemudu, as well as the Neolithic middle Yangtze.

The established rice agriculture of the later Neolithic of the Yangtze provided the basis for the spread of agriculture further south, to the southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi. The arrival of rice in these regions took place around 5,000-4,500 years ago.^[672] Foxtail millet also spread, at least to Guangxi, pointing towards the middle Yangtze as the source region, as millets were unknown in the lower Yangtze. This is supported by material culture parallels as well.^[673] From southern China rice and millet had spread further to mainland Southeast Asia by 4,000 years ago.^[674] Prior to the arrival of rice, there is evidence for the consumption of starchy foods, such as palm starch, bananas, arrow root, and Job's Tears, although it is unclear whether any of these were cultivated, as opposed to gathered.^[675] Once adopted, rice cultivation probably remained limited for some time, with evidence for population growth, and agricultural impacts on the wider landscape evident in erosional signatures in offshore ocean sediments, only from around 500 b c e.^[676]

Unlike in northern China, with its two millets, there was no complemen­tarity of crops in the basic subsistence of the Neolithic Yangtze, nor were any secondary crops of importance added to the subsistence suite, as soybean was in the north.