Archaeology Research

Archaeology Seminar Series 2024-25

Wednesday 5 February 2025 at 4pm
In Room 587, Adam Smith Building

Dr Sheahan Bestel, Powerful Plants Project, University of Glasgow
Subsistence - plant and animal - in ancient China prior to the established farming period: detailed information on the Palaeolithic and on the origins of agriculture from residues and flotation samples

This seminar will be livestreamed

Dr Sheahan Bestel has worked in China for over 20 years. She describes paleoethnobotanical analyses across different timescales in China, including from the Upper Paleolithic to the Silk Road. This includes Zhaoguo Cave, which dates from around 57,000 cal BP to modern times. Zhaoguo was listed as one of the top ten archaeological discoveries in China in 2020 due partly to the plant remains recovered as well as the collection of early bone tools. Dr Bestel will also discuss the origins of agriculture in both North and South China, and how the study of agricultural origins has changed over the past 20 years. She will discuss her findings from some proto-Austronesian sites, where Austronesians were some of the earliest Pacific seafarers. Finally Dr Bestel will discuss her research at the Silk Road site of Haimenkou, where early wheat and caprine remains indicate long-distance trade networks across Eurasia into China. 

All welcome

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First published: 31 January 2025