Jennie J.H. Jin

This project focuses on the taphonomic analysis of the 9,000 year-old archaeological faunal materials from Tangzigou, an open-air site in Yunnan Province, Southwestern China. The primary goal of the project is to reconstruct the human subsistence patterns and their interactions with the environment.
It follows excavations in 2002-03 and 2006, funded by the US NSF and the Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS, which yielded numerous vertebrate and invertebrate fossils, stone and bone tools, and plant macrofossils, and in 2008, which collected faunal and taphonomic data on a total of 5264 vertebrate specimens to analyze bone surface modification, skeletal element profile, mortality profile, and bone breakage patterns. AMS dating of the samples indicates that collections from Tangzigou are from the Early Holocene which is considered to be a crucial transitional period from a foraging-based to an agriculturally-based economy. From the beginning, the Tangzigou archaeological project was one of the first multidisciplinary collaborative projects in Yunnan involving Chinese and American researchers with various expertise which will set a good model for future international collaborations.