Willis, Anna, Pradier, Baptiste, Rogers, Laura, Halcrow, Siân, Kleffmann, Torsten, Cali, Joe, Koutamanis, Dafne, Mahan, Brandon, McCoy-West, Alex, Oo, U Saw Naing, Oo, Daw Kay Thwe, and Pryce, T.O. (2025) Living in the middle of the edge: an insight into ancient subsistence practices in Myanmar. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 17. 150.

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Abstract

The origins of agriculture have been a focal point of interest in Southeast Asia because of the profound influence domestication of cereal crops had on the ancient inhabitants of the region. Historically, an emphasis has been placed on the movement of farmers from China into Southeast Asia during the Neolithic, however, the origin of agriculture in Myanmar remains unknown. Recently, stable carbon and oxygen isotope analyses have provided insight into the subsistence practices of two prehistoric communities, Oakaie 1 and Nyaung’gan, living in north-central Myanmar during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, ca. 1300 − 700 BCE, but lacked the temporal resolution to identify any changes in the intensification of agriculture. Here, we report new C and O stable isotope analysis of individuals from Oakaie 1, and the UNESCO World Heritage complex of Halin excavated between 2017 and 2020. With a longer chronological sequence —dating between ca. 2700 BCE and 1300 CE— Halin provides the opportunity to examine diachronic changes in these practices. The results suggest individuals from Myanmar had a mixed subsistence economy focused on C3/C4 resources during the late Neolithic to Bronze Age and a less variable subsistence focused on C3 resources in the Iron Age, possibly associated with the intensification of wet rice agriculture and changes in water management practices. Situated in north-central Myanmar on the edge of mainland Southeast Asia, we suggest that southwest China, with a subsistence economy of rice and millet, played a role in the movement of this mixed farming strategy into Myanmar.

Item ID:	85945
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1866-9565
Copyright Information:	© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Funders:	Australian Research Council (ARC)
Projects and Grants:	ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE210101383)
Date Deposited:	24 Jun 2025 23:26
FoR Codes:	43 HISTORY, HERITAGE AND ARCHAEOLOGY > 4301 Archaeology > 430101 Archaeological science @ 50% 43 HISTORY, HERITAGE AND ARCHAEOLOGY > 4301 Archaeology > 430102 Archaeology of Asia, Africa and the Americas @ 50%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1307 Understanding past societies > 130702 Understanding Asia’s past @ 100%
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