Live on the land and fed by the sea: diverse subsistence economies in the Neolithic Dawenkou Period in Shandong Peninsula, China

The Dawenkou Culture, centered in Shandong, is a typical Neolithic period featured by its unique local customs and influential inter-regional expansions. While a series of its social and cultural evolutions have been recognized, subsistence economies that could have fundamentally driven these social changes have not been fully explored. Here, we apply zooarchaeological analyses, in a modelled chronological framework, to faunal remains at the sites of Beiqian, Geduiding and Dongchu, all of which are close to the sea in eastern Shandong Peninsula. Pigs dominate the terrestrial mammals while mollusks are the most frequently recorded maritime animals, indicating a combined subsistence strategy employed by the local populations. Half of the pigs are culled older than 2 years, so their well-developed canines could be harvested by the local societies to fulfill their cultural and ritual demands. Apart from domestic pigs, wildlife resources including wild boars, deer, small carnivores and rodents, as well as marine mollusks and fishes, have also been exploited to supplement human dietary spectrum. The maritime adaptive knowledge accumulated through harvesting sea resources could finally facilitate the dispersal of agriculture in the following millennia in the East Asia.

Automated summary

The Dawenkou Culture in Shandong is a typical Neolithic period known for its unique local customs and influential inter-regional expansions. This study found that the local populations employed a combined subsistence strategy, primarily through pig farming and harvesting sea resources. The maritime adaptive knowledge accumulated during this time eventually contributed to the spread of agriculture in East Asia in the following millennia.