Adaptation and Invention during the Spread of Agriculture to Southwest China The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation D'Alpoim Guedes, Jade. 2013. Adaptation and Invention during the Spread of Agriculture to Southwest China. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:11002762 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Adaptation and Invention during the Spread of Agriculture to Southwest China A dissertation presented by Jade D’Alpoim Guedes to The Department of Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Anthropology Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts March 2013 © 2013 – Jade D‘Alpoim Guedes All rights reserved Professor Rowan Flad (Advisor) Jade D’Alpoim Guedes Adaptation and Invention during the Spread of Agriculture to Southwest China Abstract The spread of an agricultural lifestyle played a crucial role in the development of social complexity and in defining trajectories of human history. This dissertation presents the results of research into how agricultural strategies were modified during the spread of agriculture into Southwest China. By incorporating advances from the fields of plant biology and ecological niche modeling into archaeological research, this dissertation addresses how humans adapted their agricultural strategies or invented appropriate technologies to deal with the challenges presented by the myriad of ecological niches in southwest China. This dissertation uses ecological niche modeling to examine the options and constraints associated with practicing different types of agriculture in the specific ecological niches of southwest China. The predictions made by these models are then tested against archaeobotanical data from a series of sites from across the region. This approach allows one to understand how the spread of agriculture took place in its particular social and economic contexts. iii Table of Contents CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Overview of the dissertation CHAPTER 2 HUMAN BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY AND THE SPREAD OF AGRICULTURE Approaches to understanding the spread of agriculture: Europe Rethinking the spread of agriculture Behavioral ecology Applications of human behavioral ecology to archaeology Critiques of human behavioral ecology models Applying optimization models to the spread of agriculture Summary CHAPTER 3 METHODS Ecological Niche Modeling Analysis of risk Acquiring data to test the model: methods of archaeobotanical analysis Statistical analysis in archaeobotany Summary CHAPTER 4 THE BIOGEOGRAPHY OF SOUTHWEST CHINA Geology and geography of Southwest China Current vegetation patterns Ancient climate Summary CHAPTER 5 DOMESTICATES IN SOUTHWEST CHINA Rice Broomcorn and foxtail millet Wheat Barley Buckwheat Crops and labor Summary CHAPTER 6 SPREAD OF MILLET AGRICULTURE AND EARLY ADAPTATIONS ON THE PERIPHERIES OF THE SICHUAN BASIN Origins of millet agriculture in the North China microlithic A hunter-gatherer legacy in southwest China? Spread of millet agriculture to the Sichuan highlands Spread of millet agriculture to the Tibetan plateau Spread of millet agriculture to the Chengdu Plain iv Spread of millet agriculture to Yunnan-Guizhou and Southeast Asia Ecological niche modeling and agricultural strategies in the spread of millet farming Crops, languages and population movement in Southwest China Summary CHAPTER 7 THE SPREAD OF RICE AGRICULTURE: THE CASE OF THE SICHUAN BASIN AND THE YUNNAN-GUIZHOU PLATEAU The spread of rice agriculture to the Sichuan Basin Changes in subsistence patterns on the Chengdu Plain Microbotanical analysis at the site of Baodun Agricultural strategies on the Chengdu Plain during the Baodun period Spread of rice agriculture beyond the Sichuan basin: Yunnan, Guizhou and Southeast Asia Ecological niche modeling and the spread of rice and foxtail millet agriculture to Southwest China Human niche construction and the introduction of Champa rice Summary CHAPTER 8 AGRICULTURAL STRATEGIES ON THE CHENGDU PLAIN The Bronze Age of the Chengdu Plain Changes in crop composition during the Bronze Age on the Chengdu Plain Weed flora assemblages and changing agriculture strategies on the Chengdu Plain Crop processing and changes in labor organization on the Chengdu Plain Summary CHAPTER 9 CROP GLOBALIZATION AND INNOVATION: LATER HISTORICAL TRENDS IN THE SPREAD OF AGRICULTURE TO SOUTHWEST CHINA Spread of West Asian domesticates to East Asia Wheat and barley in Western Sichuan Western domesticates on the Sichuan Basin Movement of western domesticates onto the Tibetan plateau Ecological niche modeling and the spread of western domesticates Epilogue: The Columbian exchange and ecological adaptations in Southwest China Summary CHAPTER 10 CONCLUSION v This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Else Solvsten Jensen. To my family for instilling in me the curiosity that lead me down an academic path and for your love and support through my many careers in life. To Chunbai Zhang for believing in me and for these beautiful years we have spent together. vi Acknowledgements Over the past years I have been blessed a number of fantastic advisors who have provided me with examples of academic behavior to aspire to.I am extremely grateful to Rowan Flad, my primary advisor. Rowan has been instrumental in helping me gain access to the samples that allowed me to write this dissertation and in navigating the field of Chinese Archaeology. Throughout the seven years I have spent at Harvard, Rowan has patiently read every single draft of every manuscript and grant application I have written and has helped improve my writing as I made the transition from writing in French to writing in English. As an advisor and mentor, Rowan has always been fair, kind, and compassionate and has always held the highest ethical standards, something that I, along with all the graduate students in the department have been extremely grateful for. Rowan has also been a friend and a support in matters far beyond academia. I cannot have asked for a better primary advisor throughout my years in graduate school. I feel lucky to have worked closely with Richard Meadow over the years. Like Rowan, Richard has patiently read through much of my work with a fine tooth comb, taking much time out of his already busy schedule to do so. His healthy skepticism, eye for detail and his wealth of knowledge are qualities I hope to someday be able to emulate. Richard has provided the model for the kind of academic I aspire to one day become. Over the years, Ofer Bar-Yosef has been an inspiration to me and has provided me with timely advice both in academic and personal life over chats in the coffee room in the Stone Age lab. I‘m grateful to Karen Kramer, whose inspiring class on hunter-gatherer behavioral ecology led me to take the approach I ended up employing in this dissertation. vii I will sorely miss my daily interactions with all of my committee members as I move onto the next stage of my career. Throughout graduate school, I have been fortunate to be able to seek advice from a number of exceptional archeobotanists. I am grateful to Dorian Fuller for being an inspirational teacher of archaeobotany. His training course provided the basis for much of the work I carried out over the course of this dissertation and I am grateful for the numerous discussions and lab visits which helped to narrow down my identifications. I am also grateful to Zhao Zhijun who afforded me the use of his laboratory at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as well as access to his reference collection. In Boston, the Harvard University Herbarium was extremely generous in providing samples that helped me build my reference collection and allowing me to access specimens. I am also thankful to numerous individuals in the department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, including Elena Kramer, Pam Crabtree Missy Holbrook, Charles Davis and Donald Pfister who provided me with both the necessary background in botany as well as opportunities for teaching during my time at Harvard. I would also like to thank our lab manager Robert Ackert for helping me with the microscope set up needed to carry out this research. A number of students also helped with this research including Yining Xue, a graduate student at Boston University who helped me sort samples. Yining‘s outstanding master‘s thesis formed an essential component to my interpretation of patterns on the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau. Additional helping weighing and sorting samples was provided by Martin Bale, Steve Teng, and Manuel Rincon Cruz (who also assisted me with data entry, sample weighing and with formatting my bibliography in a final frenzy before submission). viii A number of other colleagues have been instrumental in helping me complete this dissertation. I‘m grateful to Erik Otorolla Castillo whose knowledge of special modeling and ArcGIS was instrumental in helping me carry out the ecological niche modeling component of this dissertation. A number of individuals in the department of Earth and Planetary Science have been extremely helpful throughout my graduate career. Ethan Butler‘s work on modern maize was inspirational for this study and have been grateful for his help in developing the methodology used in this dissertation. I am extremely grateful to Jane Baldwin, my former tutee and now Princeton graduate student in EPS, who wrote the code for the excel spreadsheets and helped me through this part of the project. I am also grateful to Marena Lin for her help in carrying out experimental fields with Gene Campaign that will provide useful information for future iterations of this study. I am also thankful to Jerry Mitrovica and Peter Huybers for funding my postdoctoral fellowship in the department of Earth and Planetary Science and I look forward to our next stage of collaboration.