Significance: The recently excavated Liangzhu hydraulic system in the Yangtze Delta has pushed back the date of formalized water engineering in China to approximately 5,100 years ago. The results are unprecedented in learning about the timing, structure, and function of a large-scale complex of dams, levees, ditches, and other water-controlling features in ancient China. Together with the well-excavated remains of Liangzhu city and its rice fields, the new findings represent one of the largest efforts of hydraulic landscape engineering in the ancient world.

Although archaeological analysis emphasizes the importance of climatic events as a driver of historical processes, we use a variety of environmental and archaeological data to show that human modification of the environment was a significant factor in shaping the early history of the Yellow River region of North China. Humans began to modify site-specific and local-level environments in the Early Holocene (~11,500–7000 BP). By the Mid-Holocene (~7000–5000 BP), the effects of humans on the environment become much larger and are witnessed at regional and tributary river basin scales. Land clearance and agriculture, as well as related land use, are dominant determinants of these changes. By the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age (~5000–3500 BP), population growth and intensification of agricultural production expanded the human footprint across the Yellow River region. By the Mid to Late Bronze Age (~3600–2200 BP), larger populations armed with better technology and propelled by more centralized governments were altering lands throughout the Yellow River region, gradually bringing the environment under human control. By the Early Dynastic period (221 bc–ad 220), the Yellow River region was an increasingly anthropogenic environment wherein human land management practices were, in many instances, as consequential as natural forces. Throughout the Holocene history of the Middle and Lower Yellow River, anthropogenic, climatic, and natural environmental processes were acting to shape human history and behavior, making it difficult, if not impossible, to say whether human or climate processes were more consequential. There is a complex relationship in China’s early history between natural and human forcing much like there is today. The Early Anthropocene concept is useful here because it recognizes that when natural and cultural forces become so intertwined, it no longer makes sense to separate the two.

The earliest ceramic drainage system unearthed at the Pingliangtai site on the Central Plains of China represents an unprecedented social and environmental manipulation as societies faced surging environmental crises in the Late Holocene East Asian Monsoon region. Here we present results of excavation and a geoarchaeological survey of the water-management infrastructures and environment which reveal the operation and maintenance of a well-planned and regulated two-tiered drainage system. Rather than a ‘centralized hierarchy’, the drainage activities were mainly practised at household and communal levels, through which Pingliangtai society was drawn to more pragmatic aspects of social governance. Through their emphasis on spatial uniformity, cooperation in public affairs, and a series of technological innovations, water management at Pingliangtai gravitated to collective shared interest as the society responded to recurrent environmental contingencies. Such a pragmatic focus on public affairs constituted a previously unrecognized, alternative pathway to the development of power structure and social governance on the Central Plains regimes in late Neolithic and later times.

The well-preserved Maoshan paddy fields (4700–4300 bp) were built on an intermediate landscape between the foothills and alluvial plain of the Lower Yangtze River. Despite several interdisciplinary research, there has been a lack of detailed environmental and ecological data to contextualise the reconstructed rice farming practices within a wider paleo-environmental background. Our research provides key information on the chronology, vegetation, and long-term hydrological fluctuations at and surrounding the paddy fields. Our 14C and OSL dates show that the initial occupation began at around 5740 ± 140 cal. bp, and the paddy fields were built at around 4675 ± 145 cal. bp and were in use continuously until around 4000 cal. bp. Our pollen, diatom and phytolith data shows that whilst the vegetation in the field was sensitive to changes caused by water management and rice farming, the ecological system surrounding the fields was relatively stable. We suggest that this high frequency of in-field vegetation changes was closely related to intensifying water management for rice farming. This thesis is supported by our geophysical and geochemical analyses of bulk sediments, which shows that the steady build-up of the alluvial sequence was punctuated by several short-term episodes of high-energy surface runoff, including strong flushing in of sandy sediments into the fields perhaps through irrigation activities. Our paleo-ecological and geoarchaeological investigation at Maoshan permits an overview of the development of rice farming and intensifying water management practices in a wider environmental context and offers significant insights to the ongoing debate on the wet-dry dichotomy of early rice farming.