Research Of Macro-charcoal Remains At Archaeological Sites Of Qijia Culture In Eastern Part Of Gansu Province

The identification of archaeological charcoal has been carried out since the end of19th century in Europe. Now, charcoal analysis has been extensively used in the reconstruction of vegetation communities and the influence of human activities on vegetation. The application of charcoal analysis in china started in the late20th century and had certain development in the recent ten and twenty years. In this paper, we introduced the method and its identification procedure, and take Qijia sites of eastern Gansu province as examples to illustrate the application of charcoal analysis in the Environmental Archaeology.As one of the cradles of Chinese civilization and dry-land agriculture, the Loess Plateau has been the area of long and intense human activity, and the original vegetation was greatly disturbed by humans. The eastern part of Gansu Province locate in the central part of Loess Plateau. Qijia culture flourished in this area around4000cal yr BP. Large amounts of charcoal exist in the cultural layers, thus providing good material for understanding of people’s use of plants and reconstruction of vegetation communities.We identified total of708charcoal fragments (>4mm)of13samples from5Qijia sites.653fragments belong to30species including two kinds of conifer plants,27species of deciduous tree and Bambusoideae with55charcoal fragments unidentified.Quercus was the main fuel wood in Qijia period. A great variety of trees existed around the sites; the deciduous broadleaved forest may developed in the valleys and Bamboo distributed in Longdong basin and Zhuanglang county in Qijia culture period. Combined with pollen data(ca.4300-3900cal yr BP), we conclude Quercus was the main type of decudious trees and widely distributed in Longdong and Longxi Loess Plateau; Betula lived on Liupanshan mountain; Pinus was not a local tree type but Picea was.