摘要
水牛（Bubalus）屡见于中国更新世和全新世的众多遗址，全部属于沼泽型水牛。因为大都没有经过系统分析，它们和现生水牛的关系不明。中国南方是水稻的最初栽培地，长期以来家养水牛即被认为与水稻农业密不可分。但是，这种假设的两者之间的密切关系并未经过仔细考察，水牛的驯化过程也不清楚，对有关考古出土水牛遗存性质的许多解释，多属推测，令人困惑。其中一个主要问题，就是缺乏对考古资料的系统而深入的分析。
Since Bubalus Mephistopheles remains were successfully identified on the Yin Ruins, Anyang, in the 1930＇s, most of the researchers have regarded this species of buffalo as a domestic stock originated indigenously. The discovery of the Hemudu site in the 1970＇s reinforced this notion, and many scholars believe that Neolithic and Bronze Age buffaloes in China were inseparable from paddy rice cultivation. The present paper challenges these traditional views. In this interdisciplinary study the authors examine all the buffalo remains unearthed from Pleistocene and Holocene sites in China. They use available data from archaeology, zooarchaeology, DNA tests, ethnohistory and ethnography to inquire into the evolution, man＇s exploitation and extinction of wild buffaloes in China, as well as the origins of the modern Chinese domestic buffalo. It is their conclusion that all the indigenous buffaloes in China were wild species, while the domestic buffalo was most likely to have been introduced from South Asia round the first millennium BC. Buffalo-plough farming in south China may have developed in the early first millennium AD, probably with the inspiration of cattle and iron-plough farming from north China. This study also provides clues to investigating the development, evolution and spread of buffalo-related rice-growing techniques, the relationships between the improvement of productive technology and the emergence of complex society, and the cultural interaction between China and South-and- Southeast Asia. This research is the first step towards understanding the wild and domestic buffaloes in China; more morphological analyses and DNA tests are needed to investigate whether gene flow occurred between the introduced domestic buffalo and the ancient wild ones in China.
出处
《考古学报》
CSSCI
北大核心
2006年第2期141-178,共38页
Acta Archaeologica Sinica
