far west as Gansu, as far east as Shandong, and as far north
as Inner Mongolia. Hunting and gathering, particularly for
meat such as deer, continued to be important, though domes-
ticated animals, such as pigs, chickens, and dogs, were also
common. Horses did not become common aft er the third
millennium b.c.e. and, then, like buff alo, were used for trans-
portation as well as food.
By 7000 b.c.e. the spread of sedentary living, pottery
making, plant cultivation, and animal husbandry had clearly
spread from the river valleys of China north to the lower and
middle Amur River basin in the Russian Far East, and even-
tually through Korea to Japan in about 1000 b.c.e. Th ey had
also spread southward through southern China into South-
east Asia and island Southeast Asia, perhaps through Taiwan
around 5000 b.c.e. and the Philippines and Indonesia by 3000
b.c.e. Eventually, these practices reached the Lapita cultures
of western Polynesia (1500 b.c.e.) and Polynesia to the south-
east and the Ban Kao Neolithic peoples to the southwest in
Th ailand. By 2000 b.c.e. they had moved westward into the
Late Harappan and related Indus Valley farming cultures in
south Asia. Each society had its own cultural characteristics
and dietary habits. Th is is clearly evident not only in the lo-
calized food groups, limited by the local environment, grow-
ing conditions, and habit, but also in the pottery assemblages,
which reveal diversity in food preparation and serving.
Th e greatest evidence for elaborate food preparation
and service is found in late Neolithic tombs in China. Food
was processed using mortars, pestles, and rollers and then
steamed, simmered, boiled, and roasted in a variety of high-
footed vessels that stood over fi re pits or placed on clay stoves.
Food and beverages were stored in a variety of large and small
jars. Th ey could be served with ladles or poured. Th e elite in
some areas ate off high-stemmed platters and drank out of
delicately manufactured high-stemmed cups. Less presti-
gious ware, such as short cups with or without handles, were
also used. By 2400 b.c.e. early peoples were making alcoholic
beverages of rice and fruit. By this time food preparation
and service, particularly in feasting environments—prob-
ably having to do with mortuary ritual and rituals involving
change in the social hierarchy—had become quiet complex,
as indicated by the increasingly elaborate decorations and
manufacturing methods of the pottery and the range of ser-
vice vessel types. By the end of the second millennium b.c.e.
elite peoples controlled the large-scale production and use
of ritual implements used during banquets that increasingly
used bronze and jade as well as other materials.
Outside the Indus Valley and northern China this level
of civilization or social complexity is not evident in the Asia-
Pacifi c area until much later. In northern Th ailand the site of
Ban Chiang (2100–900 b.c.e., contemporary with the Shang
and Zhou historical periods in China) reveals a sophisticated
use of technology, including the production of metal vessels.
Th e ancient Th ai ate rice, taro, yams, and mangrove embryos,
along with hunted animals and fi sh. Th ey sweetened their
foods with bananas, palm sugars, and honey. Likewise, to the
northeast, the increasingly sophisticated Korean culture of
the Mumun Period (1500–300 b.c.e.) produced cooking and
service vessels for a diet consisting mostly of fi sh and millet or
wheat (with soy and adzuki beans, beefsteak plants, and other
vegetables), but it was not until around the eighth century
b.c.e. that high-status remains with metal vessels are found.
In Japan metal artifacts are not evident until the fourth cen-
tury b.c.e., when the Yayoi rice farmers came over from the
mainland and replaced the Jōmon culture. A combination of
hunting and gathering and some cultivation of trees and roots
continued in the islands. In Lapita cultural complexes in the
Pacifi c islands at this time, archeologists have found cooking
ovens, storage pits for foods, vegetable scrapers, and evidence
for the use of domesticated pigs, dogs, and chickens.EUROPE
BY JACQUI WOOD
Our understanding of prehistoric food and drink in Europe
comes from a variety of sources. From the Stone Age (10,000
years ago) to the Bronze Age (3,500 years ago) information
is found in archaeological data gleaned from pollen analysis.
Such analysis relies on soil samples taken from excavated ar-
eas of an archaeological dig and studied to discover the sorts
of plants that were growing in the local environment at the
time of occupation of particular sites. Sometimes, too, the
charred remains of ceramic pots leave more direct evidence
of what people ate. Charring preserves the remains so that
archaeologists can determine the ingredients of the last meal
cooked in the pot.
Cooking fi res in dwellings also can give us information
as to specifi c types of cooking techniques used by the occu-
pants, such as the remains of clay baking. Clay baking was a
method employed to cook meat and fi sh slowly. Th e meat or
fi sh was wrapped in grass and then smeared with silty river
clay and placed at the edge of an open fi re to gently cook in
its clay casing. When the meat or fi sh was ready to eat, its
casing would crack as the steam from the cooked food tried
to escape. Th e discarded remains of this baking process are
found at numerous prehistoric sites. At a site called Trethel-
lan in Cornwall, England, dating to 3,500 years ago, a fi re pit
was full of these clay fragments. At this site bird bone impres-
sions were found in the clay fragments, indicating the type of
meat that had been cooked in it. Much earlier, approximately
10,000 years ago, the hunter-gatherer diet consisted of lots of
meat and fi sh, supplemented by nuts and berries collected in
the autumn. Th is diet was nutritious and quite adequate for
thousands of years, because high-protein diets such as this
would satisfy hunger for longer than a cereal-based or veg-
etable-based diet.
Th e seasona l aspec t of food was ver y i mpor ta nt too. Eg gs,
for instance, would have been taken from any bird and eaten
only in the springtime. In the New Stone Age or Neolithic
Period, 6,000 years ago, communities started to settle along
the coastlines, owing to the abundance of wild food availablefood and diet: Europe 477