Evidence of millet and millet agriculture in the Far East Region of Russia derived from archaeobotanical data and radiocarbon dating. (20th June 2022) - Sergusheva, Elena A.
Abstract: Agriculture based on broomcorn and foxtail millet has been identified as one of the main drivers of population expansion and/or resource and innovation transfer across Neolithic and Bronze Age Eurasia. However, accurate reconstruction of spatio-temporal patterns of millet spread within and outside China remains a challenging issue. Here we use a representative set of 27 millet-based radiocarbon ( 14 C) dates from southern Primorye to reconstruct when millet cultivation became part of hunter-fisher-gatherer subsistence in this vast southeasternmost region of Russia. The spatio-temporal distribution of the 14 C data demonstrates the following picture. After the earliest conventionally accepted (although not directly dated) appearance of millet at the Krounovka-1 site in the Suifen (Razdol'naya) River catchment west of Khanka Lake around 3521–3356 BCE (95.4% probability range of calibrated ages of wood charcoal), millet agriculture is registered at the site Gvozdevo-4 located on the southern coastal plains northeast of the mouth of the Tumen (Tumannaya) River in the first half of the 3rd millennium BCE. Several archaeological sites (Novoselishche-4, Bogolyubovka-1, Rettikhovka Geologicheskaya-1, Risovoe-4) with directly dated millet indicate the spread of millet cultivation across the fertile plains around Khanka Lake during the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE. The dates obtained from the Olga-10 site on the eastern coastal plains along the Sea of Japan suggest that millet contributed to the food economy there from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE. The presented dataset shows the presence of millet in the north-eastern part of the study region (i.e. at the Glazovka-gorodishche site) in the second half of the 1st millennium BCE. Our dataset demonstrates that millet has been cultivated in southern Primorye since the Late Neolithic, when small-scale agriculture was introduced by Zaisanovskaya culture groups archaeologically documented in the study region and neighbouring regions of China and North Korea. This indicates that millet was an integral part of the subsistence economy of the local populations throughout the entire period under review.