How We are Doing It:
This project will involve the study of modern farming sites across Asia in order to develop a model of rice and associated plants for each site. This will make up a ‘modern analogue assemblage’ which will hold diagnostic factors attributed to the different methods of rice farming we study such as dryland, wetland paddy, irrigation, etc. Our analysis will provide a new model for rice agriculture that can be used by archaeologists and palaeoclimatologists as a new tool in understanding the wider context of rice sites across Asia.
Following these models, we will compare our finds with evidence from the archaeological record by looking at sites from Eastern and Central China as well as comparatively looking at sites in India and early historic Sri Lanka. The comparison will produce a clear and easily applied method of detecting rice ecosystems through the type of rice plant and agriculture indicated. A major factor that we are looking to clarify is at what point domestication occurred in China. There are several theories on when this took place, and this project will produce models that can clearly map out the evolution of rice plants from wild to domesticated, and the different methods of farming that created these changes.
Links to sites we will look at:
In order to produce these results we will be analysing seeds and the concentration of their appearance in the archaeological record. Of significant use will be the analysis of silica remains of plants and algae known respectively as plytoliths and diatoms. These remains withstand the decay normally affecting carbon based plant forms and form an important part of the archaeological record that can reveal the type of plants present and at what stage of domestication they have reached. This in turn shows us what types of agriculture and rice ecosystem created physiological changes in the plant so that we can diagnostically pinpoint the evolution from wild to domesticated rice.
Once we have modeled rice domestication and the type of agriculture present we can look at the wider implications of field system typology. Wet rice farming produces large quantities of methane, and a better understanding of how much wet rice cultivation in the past can contribute to a better understanding of the role of human activity in modifying the global environment in prehistory. Since Methane is a greenhouse gas, it has been proposed that rice cultivation from 3000 BC began to elevate methane levels and cause global warming. The data collected from this project and models created will allow us to test this hypothesis from archaeobotanical evidence from many other sites of prehistoric rice cultivators. This may also allow us to address current climate change issues relating to rice farming, and develop new systems of how to balance crop production while lowering greenhouse gas emissions.