Early evidence for beer drinking in a 9000-year-old platform mound in southern China.

Alcoholic beverages played an essential role in rituals in ancient societies. Here we report the first evidence for beer drinking in the context of burial ritual in early Holocene southern China. Recent archaeological investigations at Qiaotou (9,000-8,700 cal. BP) have revealed a platform mound containing human burials and high concentrations of painted pottery, encircled by a human-made ditch. By applying microfossil (starch, phytolith, and fungi) residue analysis on the pottery vessels, we found that some of the pots held beer made of rice (Oryza sp.), Job's tears (Coix lacryma-jobi), and USOs. We also discovered the earliest evidence for using mold saccharification-fermentation starter in beer making, predating written records by 8,000 years. The beer at Qiaotou was likely served in rituals to commemorate the burial of the dead. Ritualized drinking probably played an integrative role in maintaining social relationships, paving the way for the rise of complex farming societies four millennia later.

Multiple indicators of rice remains and the process of rice domestication: A case study in the lower Yangtze River region, China.

The process of rice domestication has been studied for decades based on changing morphological characteristics in assemblages of both macroremains, such as charred seeds and spikelet bases, and microremains, such as phytoliths, esp. bulliform and double-peaked phytoliths. The applicability of these indicators in determining if a specific assemblage is wild or domesticated, however, is rarely discussed. To understand the significance of these indicators in the determination of domestication, we collected 38 archaeological samples from eight Neolithic sites, dating from 10-2ka BP, in the lower Yangtze River region to analyze and compare the changes of these different indicators over eight thousand years. The data demonstrate that the comprehensive analysis of multiple indicators may be the best method to study the process of rice domestication developed thus far. An assemblage of rice remains can be identified as domesticated forms if they meet the following criteria simultaneously: 1) the proportion of domesticated-type bulliform phytoliths is more than 73%; and 2) the proportion of domesticated-type rice spikelet bases is higher than 75%. Furthermore, we found that each indicator tends to change steadily and gradually over time, and each stabilized at a different time, suggesting that the characteristics of domesticated rice developed slowly and successively. Changes of multiple indicators during the period between 10,000-2,000 yr BP indicate that the process of rice domestication in the lower Yangtze River region lasted as long as ca. 6,000 years during the Neolithic, and can be divided into three stages with the turning points in the middle Hemudu-late Majiabang culture (6,500-5,800yr BP) and the late Liangzhu culture (4,600-4,300yr BP).