China Night Research Seminar Series: October 2018-19

Social Organisations in Late Neolithic Dawenkou Culture: Evidences from Stable Isotopes and Ancient DNA

Professor DONG Yu (Shandong University)

@18: 10, Wednesday, 17th October 2018

China Night by DONG Yu_Social Organisations in late Neolithic Dawenkou Culture

Abstract:

The Dawenkou Culture of late Neolithic period is very important in Chinese prehistory because it show signs of incipient social stratification, complex mortuary practices, supposedly changed gender relations, and the initial intensification of agriculture, etc. Many of these aspects are related to issues of how the societies were organised and how families were organised. In this presentation, several archaeological sites from Dawenkou Culture will be used as case studies, to demonstrate what we found out about some aspects of the social organisation of these communities with the methods of stable isotopes and ancient DNA.

This talk will be presented in English, and followed by a wine reception at Room 609.

Professor DONG Yu is from the Institute of Cultural Heritage, Shandong University, China. She got her PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2013, and joined the faculty of Shandong University since then. Prof Dong is generally interested in the origins and spread of agriculture and the social organization of ancient societies, particularly from the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods of China. She uses the tools of stable isotopes and ancient DNA to reconstruct paleodiet, to study the management strategies of crops and animals, to discern migrations, and to study kinship. She is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford.