Dynamic Studies On Human Subsistence Strategy Of Jiahu Site

Jiahu site is located at Jiahu Village, Beiwudu Town, Wuyang County, Luohe City, Henan Province. From 1983 to 2013, this site was excavated for 8 times by Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology as well as Department for the History of Science and Scientific Archaeology, University of Science and Technology of China. The site was dated back to 9000-7500 years ago and divided into three phases based on the date test and culture analyses. According to the different cultural features of excavation districts, the total excavation area was divided into five major areas including the northwestern, western, southwestern,central and eastern districts.The excavations and studies in paleoanthropology, ancient environment, rice agriculture, hunting and gathering, process technology, settlement patterns, primitive religion, ancient carved signs, music and other fields has made a series of important achievements. Human subsistence strategy of Jiahu site is very important in the mid-Neolithic archaeological research in China. Before this study, scholars have already carried out some studies on human subsistence mode. However, a further refinement is still needed for this study.This dissertation takes production tools recovered from the previous seven excavations as research object, and a combined statistical method with occurrence frequency, relative percentage and absolute number of production tools was used for the first time to observe the envolvment process of human subsistence strategy of Jiahu site in a microscopic point of view.In this paper, the first chapter is a brief introduction to the site, research status at home and abroad on prehistoric human subsistence strategy, the purpose and method of this study and previous work. The second chapter introduced the analysis of production tools recovered from different residential areas. The third chapter analyzed the production tools unearthed from Jiahu tombs. In this chapter we observed the evolvement process of production tools from tombs of different phases. The fourth chapter is a comparison study of human subsistence strategy between residential areas and tombs in Jiahu site. Chapter 5 analyzed the human subsistence strategies of some other sites which are closely associated with Jiahu, including Egou, Peiligang,Dawenkou, Longqiuzhuang and Xiawanggang sites. Chapter 6 is a comprehensive discussion on the dynamic change of Jiahu human's subsistence strategy including horizontal and longitudinal comparisons with other sites. Environment backgrounds and ethnology evidences also have been analyzed. Chapter 7 is conclusion and prospect.Through the above research, three conclusions were obtained as following:1. On the whole, the subsistence mode of Jiahu people is based on hunting and gathering, with agriculture as auxiliary. However, obvious development of agriculture was observed from the 1 phase to the 3 phase in all districts.2. The appearance of agricultural tools in tombs and residential areas is asynchronous. Generally, the appearance of production tools in tombs is later than that in residential districts, and human subsistence mode reflected by the production tools from tombs lagged behind that reflected by those tools from the residential areas.3. Within Jiahu settlement, the subsistence strategy of different districts might be different. Not only the appearance time of agricultural tools in each district was different, but the status of other production tools in each district is also different.Especially during the third phase in the southwestern district, agricultural tools increased rapidly and differentiate obviously from other districts. These phenomena and the change of settlement pattern show that different sectorizations might have developed in the site.