Phytolith Analysis Of Xiangfen Taosi And Other Sites

In China, research on agricultural archaeology began late, but develops swiftly and achieves a lot, especially in rice domestication. Archaeologists had made a great breakthrough to date back to 10, 000 years when rice was first domesticated. In contrast, foxtail millet, one of the most important cereal crops both in northern China and the world, was regretfully neglected, and few articles were published, although it played an important role in ancient Chinese civilization. In this article, we identified the diagnostic phytolith form of foxtail millet and applied it archaeologically to discuss the origin and development of agriculture in ancient northern China.Phytoliths, or opal phytoliths, plant opal, are minute biogenic structures of silica that's deposited, depending on the species of plant, between the cells, within the cell walls, or even sometimes completely infilling the cells themselves. Since phytoliths can create three-dimensional replica of the plant cell bodies, they may be identified to certain genus or species in respect to their plant tissue background and their shape (plane or three-dimensional), size, ornaments, cell orientation and other anatomical features. They serve as efficient clues to paleo-environmental reconstruction, paleoclimate, and human activities through analysis and interpretation of phytolith assemblages from various sediments. Phytoliths can also help differentiate between wild and domestic plant species.The ideal phytolith diagnostic type is one whose morphological characteristics are absolutely unique for its producer. The method of foxtail millet phytolith identification applied in this study was developed mainly on phytolith morphology analysis of morden foxtail millet specimens and Zhijun Zhao' s work(2005). As a result, a specific phytolith diagnostic type produced by foxtail millet inflorescences was...