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Science 20 March 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5921, pp. 1607 - 1610
DOI: 10.1126/science.1166605
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Reports

The Domestication Process and Domestication Rate in Rice: Spikelet Bases from the Lower Yangtze

Dorian Q Fuller,1* Ling Qin,2 Yunfei Zheng,3 Zhijun Zhao,4 Xugao Chen,3 Leo Aoi Hosoya,5 Guo-Ping Sun3

The process of rice domestication occurred in the Lower Yangtze region of Zhejiang, China, between 6900 and 6600 years ago. Archaeobotanical evidence from the site of Tianluoshan shows that the proportion of nonshattering domesticated rice (Oryza sativa) spikelet bases increased over this period from 27% to 39%. Over the same period, rice remains increased from 8% to 24% of all plant remains, which suggests an increased consumption relative to wild gathered foods. In addition, an assemblage of annual grasses, sedges, and other herbaceous plants indicates the presence of arable weeds, typical of cultivated rice, that also increased over this period.

1 Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London WC1H 0PY, UK.
2 School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
3 Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Relics, Hangzhou 310014, China.
4 Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100710, China.
5 Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto 603-8047, Japan.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: d.fuller{at}ucl.ac.uk

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Origins of Agriculture in East Asia.
M. K. Jones and X. Liu (2009)
Science 324, 730-731
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