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The origins of rice agriculture: recent progress in East Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Gary W. Crawford  and
Chen Shen
Gary W. Crawford
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L 4L6, crawford@chass.utoronto.ca
Chen Shen
Affiliation:
Department of Near Eastern & Asian Civilizations, Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen's Park, Toronto, Canada M5S 2C6, chens@rom.on.ca
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Extract

Knowledge of rice domestication and its archaeological context has been increasing explosively of late. Nearly 20 years ago rice from the Hemudu and Luojiajiao sites (FIGURE 1) indicated that rice domestication likely began before 5000 BC (Crawford 1992; Lin 1992; Yan 1990). By the late 1980s news of rice from the south-central China Pengtoushan site a thousand years older than Hemudu began to circulate (Bellwood et al. 1992; Hunan 1990; Pei 1989). Undocumented news of sites having a median date of 11,500 BP with domesticated rice has recently made the rounds (Normile 1997). In addition, the first domesticated rice in Southeast Asia, once thought to be to be older than the first rice in China, is not as old as once thought (Glover & Higham 1996: 422; Higham 1995). Finally, wild rice (Oryza rufipogon) was reported to be growing in the Yangzi valley, well outside its purported original range, making domestication there plausible (Yan 1989; 1990; 1997). Significant progress continued to be made in the 1990s and unlike research on other major crops, the literature is generally not accessible to western scholars, with some exceptions (Ahn 1993; Crawford 1992; Glover & Higham 1996; Higham 1995; MacNeish et al. 1997; Underhill 1997).

Keywords

riceOryza sativadomesticationNeolithicYangzi ValleyChinaJapanKorea
Type
Special section: Rice domestication
Information
Antiquity , Volume 72 , Issue 278 , December 1998 , pp. 858 - 866
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1998

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