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11 Dental Wear and Oral Health as Indicators of Diet among the Early Qin People A Case Study from the Xishan Site, Gansu Province WEI MIAO, WANG TAO, ZHAO CONGCANG, LIU WU, AND WANG CHANGSUI Through a comprehensive analysisof oralhealth and dentalwear,thischapter aims to reconstruct the subsistence practices of the Qin (秦) people during the Bronze Age, as well as some aspects of their habitual behavior involving teeth, in order to better understand the development of Qin culture. The Qin people played a crucial role in the rise of imperial China and its unification in 221 BC. Consequently, the origin of the Qin people, their degree of reliance on cereal agriculture and animal herding, and their relations to nomadic groups in northwestern China have long been debated. In the history of China, the term Qin has three meanings: it signifies the Qin people, the state of Qin, and the Qin dynasty (Yong 2000; Tian 2009). By the time the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) established the first truly imperial state in Chinese history, the Qin people had already long played an important role in a process of multiethnic integration that took place during the preceding Warring States period dominated by the Eastern Zhou (東周) dynasty (450–221 BC) (Niu 1996). Sima Qian (司馬遷), a prominent historian of the Han (漢) dynasty, provided an epic account of the Qin ascent to power in his Shi Ji: Qin Ben Ji (史记秦本纪; Records of the Grand Scribe: Imperial Biographies of Qin). He wrote that the ancestors of the Qin people, orZhongyu(中潏),livedinthefarwestandprotectedthewesternboundary of the late Yin (殷) dynasty (also known as the Shang [商] dynasty). During the middle of the Western Zhou period, Feizi (非子), who excelled at the breeding of horses and other herding animals, lived in Quanqiu (near modern Tianshui, Gansu Province). The local people recommended 266 Wei Miao, Wang Tao, Zhao Congcang, Liu Wu, and Wang Changsui Feizi to King Xiao of the Zhou dynasty, and Feizi was appointed to breed horses for the royal family in the area between the Xi (西) River and the Wei (渭) River. He was very successful. As a result “lands were granted to him by the king as a vassal state whose capital is Qin” (near Qinting, Qingshui County, Gansu Province). Nevertheless, the full details of the relatively sudden emergence of Qin as a powerful vassal state are rather unclear (Wang 2007). The origin of the Qin people has been the subject of a lengthy debate, initially based on the interpretation of the ancient textual sources and more recentlybasedonarchaeologicalevidence .Duringthefirsthalf of the twentieth century, two different views, which were named the West theory and the East theory (Niu 1996), emerged on the issue. The East theory was developed by Wei Juxie (1934), who proposed that the Qin people originated in Shandong Province,whichseemsveryunlikelybasedonmorerecentarchaeologicaldiscoveries . The proponents of the West theory linked Qin origins to nomadic and seminomadic tribes in what is now Gansu Province. Meng Wentong (1940) wrote that the Qin people originated among the western Rong, while Wang Guowei (1956) stated that the ancestors of the Qin were descendants of both the Rong and the Di tribe. Given a synthesis of the historical sources and newer evidence based on studies of material culture, it now seems most likely that the Qin were linked to a succession of Bronze Age archaeological cultures in the Tianshui region of Gansu Province (Gong and Hu 1990; Yong 2000; Zhang 2001). Both the relationship of the Qin people to the Rong tribes and the basis of their subsistence regime await further confirmation. In any case, beginning in the Spring and Autumn period (770–450 BC), the Qin began a territorial expansion, which accelerated during the Warring States period (450–221 BC), as lands and people ruled by other vassals of the Zhou eventually came under the control of the Qin emperor, principally by means of conquest (Yong 2000). In order to further explore the development of the Qin culture, as well as to resolve other issues about the earliest Qin people, a project entitled “Survey and Excavation of the Cities, Tombs, and Early Culture of the Qin Dynasty ” was initiated in 2004. The principal operational goal of this project is to conduct a thorough investigation of the archaeological sites distributed around the drainage of the western Hanshui (汉水) (figure 11.1). Since 2004, the archaeological team has thoroughly surveyed the drainages of the western Hanshui, located in Lixian (礼县) County, as well as the Niutou River (牛头), located in Tianshui (天水), Chingshuixian (清水县) County. Ninety-eight sites were recorded in Lixian County...

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