Preliminary Study On The Fish Remains Unearthed In Gaomiao Site

Gaomiao site which is loacted in Hongjiang city,Hunan province, is an importantNeolithic shell mound site in China.The unearthed relic and artifacts not only build thefoudation of the neolithic archaeoligical cultural sequence in the upper and middlereaches of Yuanjiang river,but also relate to some important issues such asprehistorical religion and the origin of Chinese civilization.Many hydrophilic andterrestrial animals are discovered in Gaomao site, among which the fish bones arelarge quantities and species. However,there is few similar nelolithic sites else inChina.This paper is aim to comprehensively study fish remains using zooarchaeologicalmethodolgies for the first time. Through identifying, measuring and counting about5786pieces of fish bones unearthed in Gaomiao site, it suggests that the people therecatched fishes including silver cap,herring,grass cap, carp,catfsih, which are belong totwo Orders,six Families(Subfamilies),eight Genus and seven Species. The silver capswere catched the most.However, the catch objects, quantities and using tools areobviously different between the top cultural layer(6300～5300BP) and the bottomcultural layer(7800～6800BP).During the top cultural layer, the quantities of the bigfishes is three times of the bottom cultural layer,while the quantities of the smallfishes is clearly reduced.In this study, the athour also made some innovations in the methodology ofzooarchaeology,and got some new ideas.Taking the identification of the bones forexample, the authour not only use the exterior appearacne as the evidence of speices,but also make use of the bone’s internal structure.Using this method, the variationalbone of silver carp’s fin bone supports that likes Chinese date were finally recognizedboth in Gaomiao site and other archaeological sites. By calculating the calories offeredby the fishes, it suggests that the calories of herring is more than grass carp in spite ofits less quantity. Juding from the age of the catched fish, all the silver carps are olderthan four years which reached the standard of sexual maturity. According to thesituation that there are fisheries of fish migration close to the site,people probablycatched these silver carps taking advatage of the fish migration characteristic.Finally, through camparing the fish remains unearthed in Gaomiao site with thosediscovered in other sites of Changjiang river, the imporant research value of Gaomiao site is highlighted.Further more, the author preliminary study the characterisitcs offishing economy in Changjiang River.