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Early Chinese and Japanese Subsistence: How That Shaped Social Development

The archaeological record in East Asia during the second and first millennium BC reveals the two distinct cultural identities of China and Japan developing economic, social, and political complexity. By 2000 BC the Shang, in present day northern China, had a stable system of agriculture that could support it’s population to a degree that allowed craft specialization to occur.  Evidence for “potential agriculture in East Asia is in both North and South China from 7000 to 6000 BC”  with rice being well established as a staple by the Shang Period (2000-1027 BC) after having originated in the Yangzi River Basin (Crawford 2006:77,78). Rice’s wetland adaptation, “unique among the world’s primary food grains” made it well suited to cultivation in China, especially flood prone areas where “rice is the only crop that can be grown” (Crawford 2006: 78).  

Of course rice was not the only staple harvested, with the “rice-wheat combination [becoming] critical to the Chinese agricultural economy” and research, conducted at the sites Fengtai and Arhetela, documenting “barley becoming significant in western China during the Bronze Age some time between 2000 and 800 BC” (Crawford 2006:78).  The presence of both the lush wetlands associated with the Yangzi river basin and nutrient rich loess soil of the Yellow river basin, Chinese subsistence developed intensive agricultural systems that resulted in “increasing propensities for population outflow” (Bellwood 2006:108).

In Japan the adoption of rice agriculture is considered to have come later, but by 2000 BC the Jomon culture had long adapted to life in the Japanese archipelago in a complexly integrated system of hunting and gathering, domesticated cultivation, and perhaps fishing.  Although the nature of Jomon agricultural subsistence remains controversial, the theoretical view that “economies lie along a continuum from hunting and gathering to intensive agriculture” and that the Jomon shifted from hunting and gathering to intensive agriculture is becoming more and more accepted (Crawford 2006:86).  Late Jomon Period (2300-1500BC) sites “saw a noticeable increase in horse-chestnuts finds in the west, suggesting subsistence stress and intensification, since this nut needs leaching before it is consumed” (Hudson 1999: 105).  By this period, “Jomon peoples had sizable, complex villages and large communal buildings found at some sites” which has often been used to argue for the need of agricultural subsistence, but the absence of “extensive evidence of obvious crops” at Sannai Maruyama and other major Jomon sites makes it difficult to confirm such arguments (Crawford 2006:86).  

By the Yayoi Period (400BC-250AD), it is clear that agriculture was being performed on a large scale, with the Yayoi people being described “as Japan’s first full-scale agricultural society” (Hudson 1999:103) and clear evidence from sites such as Toro, the first excavated site from the Yayoi period which contained the earliest evidence of rice agriculture at the time of it’s discovery (Habu: 20 November 08). By 100 BC, intensive agriculture had spread from Kyushu to northern Honshu, although evidence at the sites of Itatsuke and Nabatake may indicate that rice cultivation was occurring in Kyushu as far back as the Late and Final Jomon Periods (Habu: 25 September 08).  If more information concerning the fauna levels in Japan could be made available, perhaps a comparison with population estimates might show whether Jomon subsistence is entirely sustainable on hunting and gathering alone, or if agriculture was necessary or feasible prior to the Yayoi Period.

The good fortune of both China’s ecological environment and the indigenous people’s industrious and innovative reaction resulted in an agricultural productivity output that allowed rising population centers to transform from chiefdoms into full fledged states.  A variety of urban centers have left their remains as evidence of this, some in a “large complex of sites near Anyang, in northern Henan province” including the excavations at Yinxu (Barners 1999:117).  The first fifteen seasons of excavation at Yinxu recovered a host of features and artifacts including:

refuse and storage pits, semisubterranean dwellings, fifty-three surface foundations, water ditches; eight four-ramp tombs, two two-ramp tombs, more than 1000 sacrificial pits, and several hundred small burials at Xiaotun, Dasikongcun, and Xibeigang [. . .] thousands of bronze, ceramic, bone, shell, ivory, stone, and other materials. (Barners 1999: 122)

This evidence clearly indicates a complex society and settlement, with large populations and high levels of social organization and control needed to construct such communities and their resident features. Craft specialization, afforded by the productive agricultural economy which reduced the individual labor required for consumption, was in place for the development and employment of Bronze and Ceramic technology indicating horizontal social stratification.  

Perhaps most informative are the burial remains found in this area, which show a clear trend of vertical hierarchy increasing as the “royal cemetery stands in sharp contrast to several immense tracts of burials for the petty elite” (Barners 1999:129).  This trend continued to progress throughout the last two millennia BC, culminating in the Zhou mortuary tradition of lie ding, “in which the number and types of bronze vessels to be buried with the deceased was strictly prescribed according to rank” (Pines and Shellach 2006: 210).  If it can be assumed that the general concept and practice of lie ding continues through the Qin Period, if not the rigorous adherence to a numerical structure, than the magnificently appointed tombs of such individual’s as Fu Hao and Qin Shihuangdi would indicate an extreme vertical stratification with tremendous variation between class distinctions.

The Jomon peoples were certainly organized on a more egalitarian hierarchy, as exhibited by their excavated burials and the smaller population distributions. Although the continuing debate as to the Jomon’s level of agricultural subsistence has not yet been concluded, evidence for the necessary sedentism, craft specialization, horizontal stratification, and technology abounds, perhaps explaining the controversy of the debate. The difficulty in applying these into the argument is “that regional and temporal variability [. . .] is quite large [. . .] not all of these ‘complex’ features can be found when we look at Jomon” sites individually (Habu and Underhill 2006:135). Further complications, specifically a “decrease in the relative frequency of large settlements and site density, and by an increase in ceremonial artifacts and features, sophistication of crafts, including lacquerware” in the Late and Final Jomon periods, “seem to indicate a decrease in organizational complexity in subsistence and settlement” while simultaneously, there is an increase in organizational complexity in production (Habu and Underhill 2006:140).

This confusion may result from a preconceived concern that previous correlations between complexity in subsistence, settlement, and production in other cultures must also be observed in the Japanese archipelago.  If production and subsistence are considered two competing avenues of expended labor and resources than the Late and Final Jomon periods are merely exhibiting a shift in complexity, and perhaps economic value, from subsistence to production. This shift could have been necessitated by the isolated nature of, and lack of resources on the archipelago. Trade, and it’s necessary increase in production of goods, was a viable way to exchange for the subsistence needed. This would help to explain the tremendous ceramic industry of the Jomon without local intensive agriculture, as well as the “variety of new items [. . .] systematically traded. These include natural asphalt and probably salt” (Habu and Underhill 2006:140).

Bibliography:

Barners, G.L. 1999 The Rise of Civilizations in East Asia: The Archaeology of China & Japan.  Thames & Hudson, London.

Bellwood, Peter 2006 Asian farming diasporas? Agriculture, languages, and genes in China and Southeast Asia. In Archaeology of Asia, edited by Miriam T. Stark, pp. 96-118.  Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA.

Crawford, Gary W. 2006 East Asian plant domestication. In Archaeology of Asia, edited by Miriam T. Stark, pp. 77-95.  Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA.

Hudson, M.J. 1999 From Jomon to Yayoi: The Archaeology of the First Japanese.  In Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands, pp 103-145. U. of Hawaii, Honolulu.

Shellach, Gideon and Yuri Pines 2006 Secondary state formation and the Development of Local Identity: Change and continuity in the State of Qin (770-221 B.C.).  In Archaeology of Asia, edited by Miriam T. Stark, pp. 202-230.  Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA.

Underhill, Anne P. and Junko Habu 2006 Early communities in East Asia: Economic and socio-political organization at the local and regional levels. In Archaeology of Asia, edited by Miriam T. Stark, pp. 121-148.  Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA.