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Diverse lifestyles and populations in the Xiaohe culture of the Lop Nur region, Xinjiang, China

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Abstract

The archaeological culture found in Xiaohe Cemetery (1980–1450 BC) is one of the early Bronze Age cultures in Xinjiang, northwestern China. The material assemblages from Xiaohe culture display features with both eastern and western influences. These east-west cultural and dietary interactions may be observed via the diet of the Xiaohe population. This paper examined the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes of human and animal bones and human hairs from the Xiaohe Cemetery and compared with those of human bones from the Gumugou Cemetery, another Xiaohe culture site. The results indicate that the diets of the peoples from the Xiaohe culture varied significantly over different periods. The unified diets of the earlier periods reflect that an admixed population first settled in the Lop Nur region and primarily engaged in animal husbandry. In the later periods, the transformations in the human diets in this region reflect that new immigrants constantly relocated here and promoted population complexity over time. Moreover, this population occasionally produced small quantities of domesticated wheat and millet. The complex population and diversified economy of the Xiaohe culture were due to the expansion of the coeval cultures in the Eurasian steppe and eastern immigrants. Additionally, the millet cereal was probably mainly used for ritual practices rather than for staple food in the later periods.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the support of the Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (grant no. 15YJCZH132), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (GK201703084), the National Science Foundation in China (grant no. 41172164, 41571190) and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of CAS (grant no. 2013281). We are very grateful to Dr. Tingting Wang, Xinyu Zhang and Zhenwei Qiu (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences) for their assistance in the experiments. Thanks are also due to Prof. Li Zhang and Wei Pan (Shaanxi Normal University) and Xianglong Chen (Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) for their constructive suggestions.

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Qu, Y., Hu, Y., Rao, H. et al. Diverse lifestyles and populations in the Xiaohe culture of the Lop Nur region, Xinjiang, China. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 10, 2005–2014 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-017-0520-7

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