Zichan Wang

ZICHAN WANG, then a graduate student at University of California, Los Angeles, California was awarded a grant in October 2021 to aid research on “Understanding Resilience and Diversity from an Archaeobotanical Perspective—Taosi (ca. 2300-1800 BCE) as a Case Study,” supervised by Dr. Min Li. This project examines the role of diversity and flexibility in sustaining social resilience in the face of unexpected changes. This was achieved by using the Taosi polity (2300-1900 BCE) as a case study and relying on paleoethnobotanical data as the primary index evidence. The endeavor to understand the “collapse,” transformation, and persistence of complex societies has long been at the center of archaeological inquiries. In recent years, the role of diversity in fostering resilience has gained increased attention. Although diversity is commonly suggested to be beneficial to sustaining social resilience by ecologists and social scientists, archaeological case studies present complicated scenarios that both support and belie this hypothesis when situating it in long-durée investigations. By comparing the subsistence strategies before and after the social transformation at Taosi with other sites that did not undergo drastic changes, it is suggested that there was no clear association between the level of subsistence diversity and social resilience. This result calls for a reconceptualization of “diversity” –- understanding what counts as diversity and identifying the potential negative effects of diversity, as well as a more refined method to measure diversity in ancient societies in future research.