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Evidence for the early beginning (c. 9000 cal. BP) of rice domestication in China: a response

Archaeology Program, School of Historical and European Studies, La Trobe University, Melbourne Victoria 3086, Australia, l.liu{at}latrobe.edu.au

Gyoung-Ah Lee

Department of Anthropology, 1218 University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403-1218, USA

Leping Jiang

Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Relics and Archaeology, 26 Jiashan Xin Cun, Jiashan Road, Hangzhou 310014, P.R. China

Juzhong Zhang

University of Science and Technology of China, 96 Jinzhai Road, Hefei 230026, P.R. China

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.

Key Words: Wild rice harvesting • rice domestication • rice morphology • Neolithic • early agriculture • Shangshan • Jiahu • China • Holocene.

The Holocene, Vol. 17, No. 8, 1059-1068 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0959683607085121


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