Neolithisation in North China: Landscape and geoarchaeological perspectives

Abstract

Multi-disciplinary research in different parts of the world has demonstrated that neolithisation or the establishment of the ‘neolithic’ way of life, including economy, settlement, landscape management and ideology, was a lengthy process. In North China, this prolonged neolithisation is characterised by ecological diversity and increasing landscape management throughout the Terminal Palaeolithic to the Early Neolithic. Geoarchaeology is a crucial subject for the improvement of a better understanding of long-term interaction between landscape change and cultural evolution. This paper presents brief summaries of geoarchaeological surveys in the Chinese Loess Plateau and the Lower Yellow River, reviews recent archaeological discoveries dating to the Terminal Palaeolithic to the Early Neolithic in the same and related areas from the geoarchaeological perspective and discusses the different roles that the environment played in the neolithisation process in various areas. The conclusions are: (a) there is an enhanced engagement between people and the landscape during the Pleistocene–Holocene transitional period and (b) the ecological diversity and continuing mobility of archaeological cultures during the Early Holocene were critical for the transition to the Neolithic.

Keywords:

• Neolithisation
• North China
• Landscape change
• Geoarchaeology
• Terminal Palaeolithic
• Early Neolithic

Notes

1 The use of ‘archaeological cultures’ and their implications in archaeological research are issues open for debate. Prehistoric archaeology in China is particularly in this case. Here I use the names of these five early-Neolithic cultures mainly for the convenience of discussion, as they are roughly located in geographically well-defined areas. Within each culture, the archaeological remains at contemporary sites do share certain material culture traits (mostly ceramics and some lithics), but there are also subsistence variations and different qualities in each of them.

2 Recent research has pushed the date of Cishan further back to 10,000 cal BP, 2000 years earlier than previously thought (Lu et al. 2009). However, these early dates might be problematic due to controversy about ¹⁴C and stratigraphic correlation (Zhao 2011), so that the traditional view that the Cishan Culture is contemporary with other Pre-Yangshao cultures (8000–7000 cal BP) still holds (Institute of Archaeology 1979).