The Evolution of Early Yangshao Period Village Organization in the Middle Reaches of Northern China’s Yellow River Valley

A settled agricultural way of life was firmly established in the middle reaches of the Yellow River valley of northern China by the beginning of the seventh millennium BC (Bettinger et al. 2007; Chang 1986; Cohen 1998; Crawford 1992, 2006; Crawford and Shen 1998; Lee et al. 2007; Underhill 1997; Yan 1992). Situated on the banks and floodplains of the slow-flowing tributaries of the Yellow, Wei, and Fen rivers in what are today Shaanxi, Henan, Hebei, Shanxi, and Gansu provinces, these Early Neolithic agriculturists lived in compact villages of related and relatively undifferentiated households (figs. 12.1 and 12.2). After another