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This project will involve the study of modern farming sites across Asia in order to develop a model of rice and associated plants for each site. This will make up a 'modern analogue assemblage' which will hold diagnostic factors attributed to the different methods of rice farming we study such as dryland, wetland paddy, irrigation, etc. Our analysis will provide a new model for rice agriculture that can be used by archaeologists and palaeoclimatologists as a new tool in understanding the wider context of rice sites across Asia.
Following these models, we will compare our finds with
evidence from the archaeological record by looking at sites from
Eastern and Central China as well as comparatively looking at sites in
India and early historic Sri Lanka. The comparison will produce a
clear and easily applied method of detecting rice ecosystems through
the type of rice plant and agriculture indicated. A major factor that
we are looking to clarify is at what point domestication occurred in
China. There are several theories on when this took place, and this
project will produce models that can clearly map out the evolution of
rice plants from wild to domesticated, and the different methods of
farming that created these changes.
Links to sites we will look at:
In order to produce these results we will be
analysing seeds and the concentration of their appearance in the
archaeological record. Of significant use will be the analysis of
silica remains of plants and algae known respectively as plytoliths and
diatoms. These remains withstand the decay normally affecting carbon
based plant forms and form an important part of the archaeological
record that can reveal the type of plants present and at what stage of
domestication they have reached. This in turn shows us what types of
agriculture and rice ecosystem created physiological changes in the
plant so that we can diagnostically pinpoint the evolution from wild to
domesticated rice.
Once we have modeled rice domestication and the type
of agriculture present we can look at the wider implications of field
system typology. Wet rice farming produces large quantities of
methane, and a better understanding of how much wet rice cultivation in
the past can contribute to a better understanding of the role of human
activity in modifying the global environment in prehistory. Since
Methane is a greenhouse gas, it has been proposed that rice cultivation
from 3000 BC began to elevate methane levels and cause global warming.
The data collected from this project and models created will allow us
to test this hypothesis from archaeobotanical evidence from many other
sites of prehistoric rice cultivators. This may also allow us to
address current climate change issues relating to rice farming, and
develop new systems of how to balance crop production while lowering
greenhouse gas emissions.