Wenquan Fan’s scientific contributions

The Miaodigou culture in central China had far-reaching influence across much of the Late Neolithic China, leading to the formation of some would call ‘Early China’. Its exquisitely painted pottery with highly stylized patterns is especially well-known to East Asian archaeologists. The Miaodigou culture is represented by archaeological remains of Phase I (3800—3300 BCE) of the Miaodigou site in present-day Sanmenxia City of Henan Province. While a high level of specialization in pottery production has long been assumed for the Miaodigou site (and the culture as well), it has not been systematically demonstrated and discussed. The present study focuses on the Phase I utilitarian pottery—most of which are plain but some are painted—recently unearthed from the Miaodigou site. By combining archaeological and archaeometric evidence, including chemical compositional analysis (hhXRF) and mineral identification (XRD), we, for the first time, discuss pottery production at the very center of the Miaodigou culture. We reveal an overall compositional uniformity in the Miaodigou utilitarian pottery that largely exists across different pastes, colors, vessel forms, form-deduced functions, stages, and spatial units. Our results attest to the high intensity and technological continuity of pottery production at the Miaodigou site, confirming that the site was a regional production center through much of the Miaodigou culture period. We suggest that the centralized production of pottery had taken place at the Miaodigou site.

Animal remains of Miaodigou period unearthed from Miaodigou Site have been examined and classified according to their species, quantities, sizes, ages, sexes, frequencies of appearance, traces on bone surfaces and abnormalities. In this period, humans ‘exploited’ resources to acquire meat, mainly via raising pigs and occasionally hunting for boars, deer, birds and gathering mollusks and fish. How a certain animal was ‘exploited’ was up to its species. Combined with previous research ,we found out that there was a strong consistency in the exploitation of fauna resources.

Across Eurasia, horse transport transformed ancient societies. Although evidence for chariotry is well dated, the origins of horse riding are less clear. Techniques to distinguish chariotry from riding in archaeological samples rely on elements not typically recovered from many steppe contexts. Here, the authors examine horse remains of Mongolia's Deer Stone-Khirigsuur (DSK) Complex, comparing them with ancient and modern East Asian horses used for both types of transport. DSK horses demonstrate unique dentition damage that could result from steppe chariotry, but may also indicate riding with a shallow rein angle at a fast gait. A key role for chariots in Late Bronze Age Mongolia helps explain the trajectory of horse use in early East Asia.