The Origin of Rice Cultivation at 4,000 Years Ago on the East Coast of Taiwan: Preliminary Results of Phytolith Analysis

International audienceArchaeological investigations in the eastern coastal region of Taiwan have been carried out for a long time, but they have not unearthed large amounts of plant remains. Because of this, archaeologists have used stone knives and sickles, known through ethnographic analogy to be prehistoric agricultural harvesting tools, as a proxy for the existence of cereal agriculture. Based on their presence, cereal agriculture is conjectured to have started ca. 4,000 years ago during the Cord-marked Pottery Culture period, but through the present day our understanding of the development conditions of prehistoric rice agriculture remains limited. However, we can consider this in relationship with the situation on the west coast of Taiwan, where in recent years archaeological excavations have unearthed much carbonized rice, demonstrating that rice agriculture was already in use 4,800 years ago