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Diet Transition or Human Migration in the Chinese Neolithic? Dietary and Migration Evidence from the Stable Isotope Analysis of Humans and Animals from the Qinglongquan Site, China
Author(s) -
Guo Y.,
Fan Y.,
Hu Y.,
Zhu J.,
Richards M. P.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
international journal of osteoarchaeology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.738
H-Index - 60
eISSN - 1099-1212
pISSN - 1047-482X
DOI - 10.1002/oa.2465
Subject(s) - china , agriculture , mass migration , immigration , geography , isotope analysis , δ13c , stable isotope ratio , zoology , biology , archaeology , ecology , physics , quantum mechanics
The Qinglongquan site, China, includes materials from the Neolithic Qujialing (3000–2600 bc ) and Shijiahe (2600–2200 bc ) periods, and lies within the Sui‐Zao Corridor that connects the Nanyang Basin in the north and the Hanjiang River Plain in the south. Previous research suggested a dietary shift from rice‐based to millet‐based agriculture between the Qujialing and Shijiehe periods at this site. The reason for this dietary shift is still unclear, and it is possible because of immigration into the region by people who already had a mainly C 4 ‐millet‐based diet (i.e. from Northern China). In this study, we examine the carbon ( δ 13 C) and nitrogen ( δ 15 N) results and present sulfur ( δ 34 S) isotope analyses of human ( n = 27) and animal ( n = 36) samples to test the hypothesis of whether this dietary shift was due to migration. The δ 34 S values of the Qujialing humans ranged from 5.5‰ to 8.1‰ [average 6.5‰ ± 1.0 ( n = 7)], and the δ 34 S values of the Shijiahe humans ranged from 4.1‰ to 7.4‰ [average 5.8‰ ± 0.9 ( n = 18)]. Because these values overlapped and were similar to the animal δ 34 S results [4.3‰ to 8.8‰, average of 6.6 ± 1.3‰ ( n = 31)], no evidence of migration was found for the humans with the different diets at the Qinglongquan site. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.