Advances in Earth Science ›› 2001, Vol. 16 ›› Issue (6): 761-768. doi: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2001.06.0761

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SUMMARIZING THE ENVIRONMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA

YANG Xiaoyan, XIA Zhengkai   

  1. Department of Urban & Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871,China
  • Received:2001-01-20 Revised:2001-04-23 Online:2001-12-20 Published:2001-12-01

YANG Xiaoyan, XIA Zhengkai. SUMMARIZING THE ENVIRONMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2001, 16(6): 761-768.

 In 1921, J.G.Anderson studied the stratigraphy and deposition of Yangshao Site in Yangshao village, Henan Province, and concluded that the past man of Yangshao culture occupied on the plain with shallow stream. Maybe it’s the beginning of environmental archaeology in China. In the study of  the Shangzhai Site, Beijing in 1995, the researchers introduced environmental archaeology from overseas into China formally. The environmental archaeology, as an interdisciplinary, made a great progress in the last over ten years. The achievement was summarized and discussed in this paper. Reconstructing paleoenvironment is a key problem in the Paleolithic environmental archaeology. The history of research methods used how to reconstruct the paleoenvironment is divided into  three stages. (1) The traditional analysis stage. The scientists used animal remains, esp. mammalian fossils excavated to conclude the paleoclimate, according to the animals’ habitation. (2) The multi-analysis stage. The scientists applied more methods and technology using in Geosciences to reconstruct the paleoenvrionment, such as analyzing the result of ferrous oxides and grainsize, stable isotope, etc. (3) Synthetical studying is tried to operate now. In the Neolithic and Chalcolithic environmental archaeology, the scientists are success in: (1) Reconstructing the Paleoenvironmental background of a few archaeological cultures rise and fall, transit, interrupt and shift etc.; (2) Finding that in some degrees, there’s the coupling relationship between culture transition and climate transition; (3) Finding that the nature factors is one of the key reasons why some archaeological cultures is interruptive sometimes in some areas; (4) Contributing to some special archaeological field, such as the origin of agriculture.But the content of study on environmental archaeology is not balance in temporal and spatial in China, more scientists pay their attention to the period since late Pleistocene, not earlier, and more research were carried out in Northern China, Taihu lake, Jiaodong Peninsula, and so on, not the Sichuan Basin, Dongtinghu lake, and other regions where the environmental archaeology research just have been started. At present, the environmental archaeology needs the breakthrough in theoretics and methodology and the cooperation between archaeologists and else disciplines’ researchers.

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