Publication Date:
2017-03-21
Description:
A significant body of recent research shows that the first east–west transmission of cereal crops, Triticum spp. (wheat) and Hordeum spp. (barley) from the west and millets ( Setaria italica , foxtail millet, and Panicum miliaceum , common millet) from the east, took place sometime around the start of the 5th millennium bp , with part of the most likely route lying along the Tianshan mountains in northern Xinjiang, China. Here the dominant economic adaptation is, and was in prehistory, not crop-based agriculture but transhumant pastoralism. The site of Luanzagangzi (ca. 3,300–2,900 cal bp ) on the northern slope of the Tianshan is one of only a handful of Bronze Age sites in Xinjiang with evidence for well-established crop cultivation. In this paper, we report on ten samples collected for phytolith analysis from a 4 m deep profile at Luanzagangzi. The results show evidence that a range of cereal crops was being grown (multi-cropping), Triticum spp., Hordeum spp., Setaria italica and Panicum miliaceum . Pooideae, Paniceae woody plants, Phragmites (reed) and Cyperaceae (sedges) were presumably also exploited for subsistence purposes in this area. We speculate that the strategy of growing a range of crops, wheat/barley, common millet and foxtail millet was adopted by the Bronze Age population in this region as a supplement to herding. The findings of this study help us to understand the dispersal of cultivation strategies across the Eurasian steppe via the Xinjiang region, and the communication between China and the West in the late Bronze Age.
Print ISSN:
0939-6314
Electronic ISSN:
1617-6278
Topics:
Archaeology
,
Biology
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