The Bioarchaeological Research On The Skeletal Human Remains From Dabaoshan In Inner Mongolia, China

Frontier interaction between nomadic pastoralists and the agrarian-based Chinese empirewas a complex phenomenon, the south central region of Inner Mongolia in China has beendefined as an area where two economically diverse cultures interacted in prehistory: nomadicpastoralists from the north and sedentary agriculturalists from the south. Earlierarchaeological studies of the region indicated that cultural exchanges between these twogroups occurred prior to the early Iron Age (about2000BP). Previous studies andinterpretations of early Iron Age in this area focused on the Chinese perspective and reliedupon textual data from ancient Chinese sources, as well as archaeological evidence ofmaterial culture, Previous studies of human craniometric variation in this region also suggestthat some populations may have originated from the north and others from the south,revealing constant population migrations, Dabaoshan cemetery (2300-2200BP) is a recentlyexcavated archaeological site in south central Inner Mongolia, China. Human remains fromDabaoshan cemetery (DBS) represent one of the earlier groups of ancient people in this area,which has the potential to illuminate the prehistoric life ways and relationships of ancientpeoples in East Asia. Yet, little attention has been given to this cemetery by way ofarchaeological research. It is unclear what types of culture and economy populations living atDabaoshan practiced. In this study, the nature and health consequences of the interactionsbetween populations in DBS were documented using multiple lines of bioarchaeologicalevidence to test longstanding assumptions about dietary dependency and violent conflict ofDBS and even the south central region of Inner Mongolia.This study takes a bioarchaeological method in order to provide a well understanding ofthe ancient inhabitants in Dabaoshan region; we considered it very important to provide dataand supporting discussion of the following two questions:(1) collecting the information aboutthe demographic structure, skeletal morphology, and health condition of ancient people fromDBS, using the paleodemographical, paleoathologiacal and physical anthropologicalmethod.(2) comparing and contrasting the cranial characters of DBS and other archaeologicalsites in northern China aimed to explore the population affinity of ancient people in DBS andcombining the historical records, to clarify the internal relations between health of population, social distribution system and special geographic environment of an early stratified society inthe DBS region.As a result, this dissertation was made up by three main components:Firstly, the Chapter Two shows the study of the population structure of ancient peoplefrom DBS, the average life expectancy is34.29(male:35.33, female:35), while the meandeath age is33.37, and there are mainly young adult and middle-aged adult, but no old adult.Secondly, the skeletal morphological study of DBS is conducted in both nonmetric andmetric way, Chapter Three and Four are the cranial and dental nonmetric research, andChapter Five and Six are the cranial and long bone metric study. The results illustrate that thepopulation affinity of DBS was not as simple as ancient people from other sites in this region.And the limb bone research indicates that the female of DBS were in pool nutrition and theireconomic status was not very high.Thirdly, Chapter Seven investigates the health condition of DBS by studying on dentaldisease, arthritis, fracture and trauma. The results show that the carbohydrates food was themain part of their food supply, while there was still a small number of meat in their diet, alsothe results indicate that the agricultural, which the ancient population from DBS had,probably arrived the mutual level. The results also show that the society of DBS was moreharmonious than other sites in this region.Lastly, Chapter Eight is the comprehensive study of people from DBS by combining theother disciplines and Chapter Nine makes the conclusions: The study indicates that the humanremains of DBS are the mixed-race population, and more similar to those from the centralplain of China (sedentary agriculturists) than to the northern pastoralists. This study alsosuggests that the human migration into this region had begun to the early Iron Age.