Food, Cooking and Potteries: A Preliminary Study on the Social Developments of the Neolithic Mijiaya Site in Guanzhong Area, China

Abstract

Abstract The origins of agriculture and pottery were generally believed to contribute to the changes of human food resources and the innovations of cooking technologies in the Neolithic China. Hence, the investigations of the co-evolutions in human food resources, cooking technologies and pottery functions will provide a new perspective for understanding the ancient social developments. Here, taking the Mijiaya site as an example, we present the multiple analyses on the plant microfossils of pottery remains, the AMS 14C dating and isotopes of animal bones, and the types and textures of potteries in comparison with those from some surrounding sites in northern China during the Late Neolithic period. The results indicate that the diets of Mijiaya peoples (ca. 3093‒1961 cal BC) were heavily reliant on the diversified crops and livestock supplemented with some gathering plants and hunting animals; meanwhile, Mijiaya peoples used a variety of ways to refine the pottery functions for the complex food processing. Moreover, the food processing also potentially promoted the development in animal husbandry, basing on their feeding strategy and eating patterns. These preliminarily suggest that the coordinated development in the food, cooking and potteries had contributed to the social complexity in the Late Neolithic China.