Article Geology Starch grain evidence reveals early pottery function cooking plant foods in North China Xiaoyan Yang • Zhikun Ma • Tao Wang • Linda Perry • Quan Li • Xiujia Huan • Jincheng Yu Received: 24 February 2014 / Accepted: 19 May 2014 / Published online: 26 June 2014 Ó Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 Abstract Early pottery sherds excavated in northern China date back to more than 11,000 cal a BP, and are presumed to have been used as cooking vessels. There has been, however, no direct evidence to demonstrate this function. Here we report ancient starch grains recovered from carbonized residues adhering to the bases of flat- bottomed vessels excavated from the Zhuannian site dating more than 10,000 cal a BP in the North China Plain. This evidence demonstrates that early pottery was being used to cook cereal grains, particularly millets, and acorns. Because millets were in the process of domestication at this time, we propose that pottery invention in northern China may have been related to early farming activities. Keywords Early pottery Á Pottery function Á Ceramic residues Á Ancient starch Á North China Plain 1 Introduction In East Asia, the manufacture of ceramic vessels began quite early during the late Paleolithic, with pottery sherds as old as 14,000 cal a BP occurring in both the Russian Far East and Japan [1, 2]. In southern China, ceramics have been recovered from sites that date even earlier. Pottery sherds unearthed in the caves of Yuchanyan in the Hunan Province have been dated back to 18,000 cal a BP, and ceramics from Xianrendong in the Jinagxi Province to 20,000 cal a BP [3, 4]. The presence of ceramic remains in these early contexts demonstrates that hunter-gatherers in East Asia used pottery vessels for some 10,000 years before they became sedentary or began cultivating plants. There are more than 10 archaeological sites in China that date prior to 10,000 cal a BP and contain ceramic vessels (Fig. 1). The earliest potsherds recovered from sites in North China date to ca. 11,000 cal a BP at the Nan- zhuangtou site, indicating that pottery came into use in northern China much later than in the south. Furthermore, the early ceramic vessels in the north are characterized by a flat base, a feature that is different from the typical roun- ded-base vessels from the south. These two functional or stylistic groups of vessels represent different cultural tra- ditions, and have been interpreted as indicating different initial drivers for investment in ceramic container tech- nology [5–7]. X. Yang (&) Á Z. Ma Á Q. Li Á X. Huan Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China e-mail: yangxy@igsnrr.ac.cn Z. Ma Á X. Huan University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China Z. Ma School of Geography, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China T. Wang Department of Archaeology and Museology, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China L. Perry The Foundation for Archaeobotanical Research in Microfossils, Fairfax, VA 22038, USA L. Perry Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, Center for Earth Observing and Space Research, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA J. Yu Beijing Institute of Cultural Relics, Beijing 100001, China 123 Chin. Sci. Bull. (2014) 59(32):4352–4358 csb.scichina.com DOI 10.1007/s11434-014-0500-6 www.springer.com/scp