The spread of agriculture south of Zhejiang

Turning now to the Neolithic archaeological record south of Zhejiang, it is necessary first to recap on a few observations made above. The Neolithic cultures examined so far, in the Yangzi and Yellow Valleys, as well on the coasts of Shandong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, show a great deal of intertwining in economy and style, with the most "idiosyncratic" perhaps being that represented in the basal layer 4 at Hemudu, a factor which could in part be due to the superb level of preservation and sheer quantity of material in this site. By 5000 BC, other indications of regionalism in artifact style were undoubtedly starting to appear, and we may expect that by this time there was a separation forming into a Sinitic tradition to the north of the Yangzi (Yangshao and Dawenkou cultures) and a non-Sinitic tradition to the south, ancestral to many of the cultural minority populations of present-day southern China (Hemudu, Majiabang, Zaoshi, and Daxi cultures).

The expansion of Neolithic cultures through southern China seems to have reflected two axes (Figure 6.5). One extended from the Zaoshi, Tangjiagang, and Daxi cultural spheres (ca. 5000 to 3000 ac) of the Middle Yangzi lake district, running southward along river valleys to Guangdong (including Hong Kong) and Hainan. The other extended down the coastline with its myriad offshore islands formed as a result of the postglacial sea-level rise, from Zhejiang to Fujian, Guangdong, and Taiwan. The latter spread appears to have been roughly contemporary with the westerly Zaoshi/ Daxi-influenced spread and was probably fueled in part by the succession of ricegrowing cultures in the Shanghai / Hangzhou Bay region. Taiwan, with its Austronesian heritage, belongs in my view to this latter tradition, while the inland axis represents that which spread the oldest Neolithic assemblages into Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Thailand.

As far as the eastern stream of Neolithic spread southward is concerned, the Majiabang culture of the Shanghai region had developed into the Songze culture by 4000 Bc. Songze pottery is characterized by a continuing presence of tripods and high pedestals, many of the latter with decorative cut-outs.' There is a continuation of red-slipping, incised decoration, and cord-marking, as there is

in the poorly dated Tanshishan culture to the south in Fujian, which may be derived from the Songze. In northern Guangdong, the site of Shixia reveals the oldest dated presence of rice so far in southeastern mainland China, in plentiful quantities, at about 3000 Bc. The Shixia pottery resembles that of both Songze and the following jade-rich Liangzhu culture in the lower Yangzi delta region (ca. 3300-2300 Bc; Huang 1992), and Shixia has also produced jade bracelets, rings, and earrings of Liangzhu type. All of this suggests to Charles Higham (1996a, 2003) that the spread of rice cultivation down the Chinese coast through Fujian into Taiwan, and into northern Guangdong, had occurred by 3000 BC.

Currently, the earliest Neolithic sites in Guangdong and Hong Kong appear to lack evidence for rice and to have a fabric tradition emphasizing the use of barkcloth, beaten with distinctive grooved beaters, rather than of textile fibers spun with spindle whorls and woven on a loom. Charles Higham (1996a:79) regards these assemblages as the handiwork of hunters and gatherers ("affluent foragers"). I am not so sure of this, since these earlier sites are numerous, prolific in material culture, often located near good rice-growing soils, and certainly not suggestive of any continuity from the preceding Hoabinhian pebble tool complex. There are strong hints amongst them of a level of population density that we would associate with farming, commencing by perhaps 4000 BC. Given recent findings of plentiful rice and millet remains in sites of this period in southern Taiwan (chapter 7), further research is required, especially in the examination of soil samples for phytoliths of rice and other crops.

The oldest Neolithic sites in Hong Kong and the Pearl Delta (for instance, Xiantouling, Dahuangsha, Hac Sa Wan, Sham Wan, and Chung Hom Wan) date between 4200 and 3000 sc, and comprise numerous coastal midden-like deposits on sandy soils, up to about 1.5 hectares in size (Meacham 1978, 198485, 1994; Chau 1993; Chen 1996; Yang 1999). Their painted and incised pottery styles resemble the contemporary Tangjiagang and Daxi pottery complexes of the Middle Yangzi, as well as the Shixia assemblage further north in Guangdong. They are generally associated with stepped and shouldered stone adzes, and they also contain large numbers of barkcloth beaters. Bill Meacham (1995:450) thinks these populations all grew rice and I tend to agree with him, but the evidence is currently very fugitive. The economy of the earliest Neolithic in far southern China still remains something of a mystery, and we

will probably have to settle, in the final resort, for a mosaic pattern of regional crop dominances, from rice through to tubers (particularly taro) and tree products.

In general, the pre-Neolithic assemblages of southern China and Mainland Southeast Asia belong to a pebble-tool tradition known as the Hoabinhian, a complex of assemblages found very widely in caves and shell middens that extends back into the Pleistocene and which is clearly indigenous to the region. Although many archaeologists have attempted in the past to show that the Hoabinhian underwent an in situ transformation to agriculture, no convincing demonstration of this interesting possibility has ever been presented. Occasional occurrences of sherds of cord-marked pottery in the upper layers of caves probably reflect disturbance, and although the Hoabinhians were clearly plant users and perhaps even plant managers, we have no indication that they ever developed systematic field agriculture (Bellwood 1997b; Higham 1996a; Higham and Thosarat 1998a). Southern China, together with the mainland and island regions of Southeast Asia, belongs to a zone of strong and clear-cut Neolithic spread. Only when we move as far east as New Guinea, as we do in the next chapter, does the fundamental picture change.

Chapter 7

The Spread of Agriculture into Southeast Asia and Oceania

I must confess to having some degree of vested interest in the contents of this chapter since my research career has been spent in the region of concern. Hence I make no apology for presenting a basic summary of views which I have published elsewhere,' together with acknowledgments of counter-views where such seem necessary. In terms of environment, history, language, and biology, over the long term, we have essentially three regions of concern, all of course overlapping greatly in environmental and historical context but nevertheless being coherently identifiable. These regions are Mainland Southeast Asia (Burma across to Vietnam and West Malaysia), Island Southeast Asia (Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, East Malaysia, Brunei), and Oceania - the islands of the Pacific Ocean from New Guinea eastward (Figure 7.1). The latter are normally divided into the regions termed Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, although in recent years a tradition, started by Roger Green (1991), has developed of using the term Near Oceania for the islands to as far east as the Solomons, and Remote Oceania for those beyond. Pleistocene huntergatherers reached the islands of Near Oceania over 30,000 years ago, but only Austronesian agriculturalists were able to reach the islands of Remote Oceania, and only within the past 3,500 years.

Within this vast region, only the New Guinea Highlands have yielded data suggestive of independent agricultural origins. The other regions of Southeast Asia and Near Oceania, excluding the New Guinea Highlands, reflect varying degrees of agricultural spread through landscapes previously settled by huntergatherers, in extremely complex trajectories. Descendants of some of the earlier populations still survive as huntergatherers today, particularly amongst lowland sago gatherers in New Guinea (Roscoe 2002), and as the Negritos (Semang and Agta) of the Malay Peninsula and Luzon (Figure 2.5). Even where they no longer survive as discrete hunter-gatherer populations, the genes of some of

agricultural mosaic. Such contributions, especially in a purely genetic sense, are still visible and important today in the Malay Peninsula, parts of the Philippines and eastern Indonesia, and in Island Melanesia. In terms of material culture and language, however, it is my impression that continuity from the pre-agricultural past has not been particularly strong, except in Near Oceania and amongst some of the groups who continued a hunting and gathering lifestyle into the recent past (see chapter 2).