Animal Exploitation Of Late Dawenkou Culture In Huai River Basin

By studying the faunal remains in archaeological sites and the relics related to animals,zooarchaeology can extract information to restore the ancient social life,understand the ways people used animal resources,and reveal the relationship between humans and animals in the past.The geographical scope of this paper is the Huai River Basin,which is located in the east of China,with a developed water system,between the Yangtze River and the Yellow River,and it is an important area for the communication between the northern and southern cultures.By traditional zooarchaeological methodologies and the analysis of comparison,combining materials of ethnology,archaeobotany,through the analysis of unearthed animal bones from the two late Dawenkou Culture sites-Jinzhai site and Zhaozhuang site,author tries to restore ancestors' subsistence mode and sacrifice customs during this period.Jinzhai site is located around Jinzhai village,Zhuangli township,Xiaoxian County,Suzhou.Surrounded by mountains,the site covers an area of about 500,000 square meters.The excavated remains of about 2,000 animal bones are all mammals,including dogs,large carnivores,pigs,small deer,sika deer,large deer,cattle,sheep,rabbits,etc.Among mammals,pigs occupy a dominant position,accounting for about 40%of the total number.Ancestors' subsistence mode is a combination of millet cultivation and pigs domestication.Occasionally,it will supplement some wild meat resources,but it is still dominated by agricultural production,and the agricultural production level may be quite high.The three worship relics and burial remains in the east burial area all show that the Jinzhai ancestors would use animals for sacrifice.During the 2016-2017 excavation of the Zhaozhuang site,the unearthed animal bones include tortoise,trionychidae,aeperidae,bagridae,cheleotridae,small rodents,dogs,raccoons,pigs,elk,sika deer,roe,cattle,and a very small number of birds,among the specimens mammalia account for the vast majority,and most of the mammals are pigs and dogs.Ancestors of Zhaozhuang site live up to the subsistence model combining rice planting with domestic pig breeding,and occasionally hunting wild animals to supplement the meat resources.In the burials,there are pig jawbones,and 7 animal pits were found in the trench.Combined with the above materials,the author makes qualitative and quantitative comparison of the zooarchaeological materials unearthed in different sites from the level of sites,the level of Huai River Basin.Jinzhai and Zhao Zhuang,two sites and other sites in this area,their cultural outlooks,roughly consistent.In spite of a few differences in terms of fauna composition,ancient environment,subsistence and sacrifice behaviors,in the use of animals,all materials highlight the important position of pigs,both in terms of consumption and spirit.The animal remains unearthed and organized systematically from prehistoric sites in this area are not much,and related research is relatively lack,comprehensive zooarchaeological research in this area is still in the phase of accumulation of data,Jinzhai site and Zhaozhuang site provide valuable information for the prehistoric subsistence and ritual customs study in Huai River Basin.