Carbon And Nitrogen Stable Isotope Analysis Of Human Bones From The Liao And Jin Period Excavated From The Temple Site Of Gucheng Village,Hunchun,Jilin

During the 10th-13th centuries,ancient China was in a period of regime fragmentation,with many ethnic groups living in the northeast,including the Khitan,the Jurchen,the Bohai,the Xi,the Shiwei,and the Han,etc.During the Liao and Jin dynasties,the Khitan and the Jurchen established minority regimes one after another.While expanding their territories and annexing other ethnic groups,they carried out frequent migration activities for political and economic reasons,which led to different degrees of development and diversification of the economic situation of the ancestral peoples in the Liao-Jin area against the background of the intermingling of various ethnic groups.At present,there are a lot of research results on the economy of the ancestral people during the Liao and Jin dynasties,and the regional distribution of different economic zones of the industry has been clearly delineated.However,there is a lack of research on the Jilin area,especially the eastern frontier of Jilin.In this paper,AMS-¹⁴C dating was performed on three human bones excavated from a temple site in Hunchun,Jilin,and C and N stable isotope analysis was also performed on 27 human bones and one cattle bone excavated in order to study the economic development of the ancient ancestors’livelihoods in the region,to provide insight into the dietary structure and livelihoods of the ancestors and the domestication and rearing of animals in the northeastern frontier region,and to explore the process of ethnic integration and the formation of a pluralistic pattern of Chinese civilization.The results of AMS-¹⁴C dating corrected by dendrochronology show that the dating data are within the range of 1028～1256 cal AD,and combined with the time span of the Liao-Jin period（907～1234）,the skeletal samples selected for this paper are judged to be in the Liao-Jin period as a whole.Most of the ancestors showed that C₄food was the main food,and the food structure of a few ancestors included both C₃plants and/or animals that fed on C₃plants,and C₄plants and/or animals that fed on C₄plants.The distribution ofδ¹⁵N values of the ancestors ranged from 8.1‰to 11.1‰,with the mean value of9.6‰±0.7‰,indicating that the diet of the ancestors all contained rich meat resources,and most of them had a fairly rich protein intake.The food structure of cattle(δ¹³C:-15.5‰,δ¹⁵N:5.8‰,n=1)includes both wild C₃foods and C₄food feeds added by human intervention.A one-way ANOVA of theδ¹³C andδ¹⁵N values of the ancestors in the three different age groups（immature large individuals,immature small individuals and adult individuals）revealed that theδ¹⁵N values of the adult individuals(δ¹³C:-14.8‰～-10.4‰,-11.4±1.0‰,δ¹⁵N:8.8‰～10.6‰,9.7±0.5‰,n=19),the immature small individuals(δ¹³C:-12.0‰～-11.3‰,-11.7±0.3‰,δ¹⁵N:8.1‰～9.2‰,8.8±0.5‰,n=3)and the immature large individuals(δ¹³C:-11.6‰～-10.2‰,-11.1±0.7‰,δ¹⁵N:8.7‰～9.2‰,8.9±0.2‰,n=3)showed statistically significant differences（P=0.02>0.05,P=0.04>0.05）,which means that the adult individuals consumed more animal protein than the immature individuals,which may be related to the fact that the adult individuals were engaged in more social production activities.Combined with historical references and archaeological excavations,it is found that the ancestors of the temple site in Gucheng Village had a well-developed agricultural economy,and the ancestors may have consumed a large number of agricultural crops such as corn and millet,wheat and beans.The livestock economy also plays an important role in the life of the ancestors,and the main source of intake of animal protein should include cattle,while the fishing and hunting economy gradually became a supplementary source of food resources for the ancestors.The analysis of C and N stable isotope data of humans and animals from six other archaeological sites in the Northeast Borderlands from the Neolithic to the Middle and Late Ming Dynasties indicates that the agricultural economy of the ancestral peoples in the Northeast Borderlands was generally in a state of continuous development,and that the spread of agriculture as a stable livelihood in the Northeast also accelerated the process of ethnic integration in the region,and that the consumption of animal protein by the ancestral peoples was generally on the rise,and that agriculture,livestock breeding,and fishing and hunting together formed a diversified livelihood for the ancestral peoples.