Lunch Club provides affiliates of the Stanford Archaeology Center with a community-oriented forum for engagement with current issues in archaeology. On April 15, 2026,  we will host our postdoctoral scholar Dr. Ran Chan.

Abstract:

The transition from foraging to agriculture in North China is often linked to the development of new technologies for processing cereals. Yet early farmers continued to use many of the stone tools inherited from hunter-gatherer traditions. Why did some technologies persist while others changed?

This study reexamines the emergence of ground stone technologies by investigating how different tools were actually used before and after the adoption of agriculture. Drawing on materials from the Peiligang site in the Middle Yellow River Basin, I combine use-wear analysis with microfossil residue analysis (starches, phytoliths, and microfibers) to reconstruct plant-processing activities. Experimental and archaeological evidence suggests that ground-edged tools were particularly effective for processing fibrous plants rather than harvesting cereals alone. These findings highlight the importance of fiber exploitation and suggest that technological specialization emerged through overlapping tool functions as plant use diversified during the Paleolithic–Neolithic transition.