Research On Diet Archaeology Of Neolithic In Wen And Si River Valley

After the blooming research of the archeology cultural sequence from the1970s to the1990s, Chinese Archeology now focuses on the study of the people instead of the objects. We are interested in human behavior and the process of cultural change more and more. Eating activity is the basis of the biological world. The research of eating activity will contribute to display the occurrence and development of social civilization as well as the heritage and evolution of social life comprehensively and vividly, which is of great historical and positive practical significance.Diet Archeology, generally speaking, is using the materials of archaeological excavations to recover the ancient human diet and activities, including source of raw materials, processing technology, eating utensils, and customs. We will use archaeological materials, combined with other related areas of research, to pry into the rich content and the actual form of people’s daily life in a particular era and geographical environment. We attempt to observe the changes of the culture in order to recover the history.Wen and Si River valley, where Neolithic archaeological culture sequence is relatively clear, and the sites data is rich. This paper intends to integrate the existing research, including archeology, ethnology, anthropology, and a variety of emerging science and technology, in order to obtain a clear understanding of the Neolithic ancestors diet characteristics and context of cultural changes in Wen and Si River valley.There are six parts in this thesis.The first part is an introduction, which gives the reason of this topic, the related historical and existing research, the purpose of this study, and the research ideas.The second part introduces the environment background and cultural changes of Wen and Si River valley, mainly to Beixin culture, Dawenkou culture, and Longshan culture.The third part introduces the accessibility of food, including fishing and hunting collection, food production, and animal domestication. We will explain our ancestors’ food sources by means of collecting and integrating materials of related sites.The fourth part is food processing. We collect the statistics of the types of eating utensils of the three periods, deducing and analyzing how to process food, beverages and spices are introduced separately.The fifth part is about the consumption of food. There are three aspects, including the diet, banquet activities and festival food. And then, we will investigate the processing of food waste.The sixth part is the conclusion, which summarizes the whole thesis and points out the difficulties and defects in this thesis.