Human diet and social complexity during the middle and late Dawenkou period at the Jiaojia Site, China

Abstract

Scholars have usually examined social complexity of the Dawenkou culture, Neolithic China through mortuary rituals, and have long assumed that there was graduated development of both social stratification and gender inequality. The newly discovered Jiaojia cemetery dated to the middle and late Dawenkou period, provides us a valuable opportunity to investigate the development of social complexity with a different perspective. We carried out stable isotopic analysis of human and animal bones from the Jiaojia site to explore the relationship between human diet and social complexity. The results indicate that Jiaojia people’s diets are dominated by C₄ foods (i. e. foxtail and broomcorn millet), and the contribution of C₄ foods increased significantly over time, suggesting the further development of millet farming. In addition, there were signs of food-based social stratification in the late phase of the Jiaojia site, more C₃ foods and meat were consumed by some elites. However, the dietary difference between males and females was not significant. This study demonstrates that dietary studies can be a valuable lens to examine the development of social complexity, and it also confirms that social complexity should be examined through multiple dimensions, mortuary practice is only one of them.