Taihu Lake Area, And The Prehistoric Culture Of The Ningbo-shaoxing Plain Comparative Study Of Evolution

The dissertation tries to explore economic and social change in the region of the LowerChangjiang River by using current archaeological and anthropological theory, in order to providean interpretation of why prehistoric cultures in the region developed in quite different ways.The two adjacent areas in Zhejiang Province, the circum-Lake Tai plain and theNingbo-Shaoxing plain, have been selected to made comparative study why ancient cultures ofthese two areas with similar environlnent and climate exhibited different features and trajectoriesof social development. The local sequence of prehistoric cultures begins from the MajiabangCulture, the Songze Culture and Liangzhu Culture to the Maqiao Culture. The process of socialchange witnessed an increasing sophistication of complexity. At the end of Liangzhu, complexsociety collapsed and disappeared without trace.Broad and flat circum-Lake Tai Plain has been a rather uniform topography and resourcesand had advantages for social communication and cultural diffusion. During the MajiabangCulture period, people depended mainly on wild resources. In the late Songze period, along with aclimatic change from warm and moist to cool and dry and over-exploitation as well, large faunadropped dramatically. Due to population growth and resources stress, the subsistence pattern inthis region changed from foraging to intensive agriculture or rice cultivation. Meanwhile, socialorganization in the area became increasingly complex. From the late Songze and the earlyLiangzhu periods, social communities in the circum-Lake Tai entered the stage of chiefdom.During the Liangzhu period, the society had been gradually specialized as a theocratic polity.On the one hand, elites invested large amount of labor and resources to build large publicmonuments and burials and to produce prestige goods such as jade in order to maintain theirhereditary and privilege, which resulted in proliferation of non-productive costs of the society. Onthe other hand, increasing growth of population and need for more surplus compelled communityto adopt more intensive agriculture. This would finally impair social capability to deal withvarious challenges either from environmental fluctuation or social stress. 4000 B.P. witnessed anobvious temperature drop and flood. This might have exerted a great impact on paddy agriculturewhich gradually reduce the social stability and finally lead to its collapse.In the contrast, the Ningbo-Shaoxing plain showed a much different picture both inenvironmental condition and social change. Two important sites, the Hemudu and the Kuahuqiao,although close in time and space, differed obviously in material culture and displayed littleevidence of successiveness. Furthermore, the Kuahuqiao Culture totally disappeared around 6500B.P., while the Hemudu Culture exhibited a remarkable trend of degeneration from Periodâ…¢, and was eventually assimilated with the Liangzhu Culture from the north.The dissertation argues that the difference of microenvironment and resources of thecircum-Lake Tai plain and the Ningbo-Shaoxing plain might have played important roles causingdifferent trajectories of economic and social change. Long and narrow Ningbo-Shaoxing plainspreading from east to west is a relatively small region divided by hills and streams into manyisolated ecological patches. Sucli habitat was quite diverse and full in various resources, andusually yielded more affluent wild resources than that of the circum-Lake Tai plain. Thus, thisecological habitat was more suitable for prehistoric hunter-gatherers and early farming groups tosurvive comfortably needless to develop more intensive agriculture and complex socialorganization. Archaeological evidence has indicated that the subsistence pattern on theNingbo-Shaoxing plain remained hunter-gathering subsistence pattern throughout entireprehistoric period. Relatively abundant and diverse wild resource represented high carryingcapacity. People living in such environment lacked incentives to develop more advancedeconomic and political system which characterized economic and social change in thecircum-Lake Tai area. Throughout the flourishing period of the Hemudu Culture, the settlementsin the Ningbo-Shaoxing plain were small-scale and less in number. Hierarchical differentiation didnot exist, and there were no occupational or ranking differentiation within the settlement. Theburial goods revealed an egalitarian society. Very few ritual monuments and structures had beenbuilt and "prestige goods" like jade had not been wide used. The common settlement pattern wasmainly represented by a kind of pile-dwelling and "long house" probably occupied by severalextended families or a clan. This reflects a simple and egalitarian social organization.The dissertation argues that prehistoric archaeology should go beyond data collection toanswer more important questions such as human adaptation and social change.