Taiwan, Neolithic, Austronesian

The Neolithic of Taiwan represents the first stage in the  expansion of Austronesianspeaking peoples through the Pacific. Settlement and burial evidence from the Tapenkeng (TKP) or Dabenkeng culture demonstrates the development of the early Taiwanese Neolithic over a period of almost 2000 years, from its origin in the pre-TPK of the Pearl River Delta and south-eastern coastal China. The first TPK communities of Taiwan pursued a mixed coastal foraging
and horticultural lifestyle, but by the late TPK rice and millet farming were practised with extensive villages and large settlements. The broad-spectrum subsistence diversity of
the Taiwanese Neolithic was an important factor in facilitating the subsequent expansion of Austronesian-speaking peoples to the Philippines and beyond.
Keywords: Taiwan, Austronesian dispersal, Tapenkeng  (Dabenkeng), broad-spectrum foraging, rice farming, human migration
Online supplementary material is provided at http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/hung342

Although varied in its expression, the intentional removal of teeth during life has been documented in the living and in archaeological skeletal record worldwide. Several earlier studies indicate that tooth ablation was relatively common in Taiwan as well as in the Chinese mainland beginning with the Neolithic Age continuing into the Iron Age in these regions. More recent examples of tooth ablation among several of Taiwan's indigenous groups, some occurring as late as the early twentieth century, have also been reported. In this study, we report an unusually high frequency of tooth ablation in some of the earliest Neolithic (ca. 5000 BP) skeletons from the Nankuanli East (NKLE) site in southwestern Taiwan. The patterns of ablation and teeth missing in 15 adult male and 8 adult females from the NKLE site are compared. With one exception, the most common pattern of tooth ablation in the NKLE skeletons, male and female, was the symmetrical removal of the maxillary lateral incisors and canines. In contrast to these findings, we further report no tooth ablation among the Iron Age skeletons from the Shihsanhang (SSH) site in northwest Taiwan. The significance of the almost ubiquitous occurrence of tooth ablation among the earliest Neolithic skeletons from Taiwan, including the manner of tooth removal, and the absence of this cultural modification in the SSH teeth are explored. This study contributes to studies in anthropology that attempt to reconstruct past behaviors from archaeological human skeletons.

Located in the key junction between mainland China and Island Southeast Asia, Taiwan is of great significance for our understanding of the southeastward dispersal of rice agriculture in the prehistoric period. Until now, quite limited archaeobotanical work has been done in this region. In eastern Taiwan, no archaeological evidence of rice agriculture has been obtained, probably owing to the poor preservation conditions for plant macroremains. Here, we report a new discovery of 4200-year-old domesticated rice remains at the Chaolaiqiao site, which for the first time in detail demonstrates the ancient practice of rice agriculture in this area. Based on a combination of factors that include a rice-based plant subsistence strategy, the mid-Holocene limits to available farmland and the fast-growing Taiwan Neolithic population from settlement pattern data, we infer that this contradiction in eastern Taiwan between land-dependent agriculture and limited suitable farmland encouraged a population movement out of Taiwan during the Middle Neolithic period.