Droughts, Floods, Famines, and the Fabric of the Han Imperial Agricultural System in China

The Han Empire (206 BCE-220 CE) was the second imperial dynasty of China, yet it set a precedent for expansion and economic control over extensive territories across the semi-arid regions of northern and central China. Han Period agricultural systems were intensified across these regions. Han Period records attest to episodes of devastating floods which led to massive destruction of villages and farmlands across central China, resulting in widespread famines, which many scholars have identified as the cause of significant stresses to the integrity of the Han political system. These erosive flooding events and ensuing famines were in part due to the drier climatic conditions of Late Holocene China, but can also be attributed to the land-use practices of Han Period farming systems. In order to examine the respective roles of climate and/or land-use during both the Han period, and the preceding Zhou Period, geoarchaeological research was undertaken around the historic center of Qufu in Shandong Province, China during the field seasons of the “Landscape of Confucius” Project. Geoarchaeological sediment sections and cores showed a number of Holocene geomorphological episodes that were related to both environmental and human-induced landscape changes in the region. Results suggest one of the most significant landscape impacts was caused by major deforestation beginning in the later Zhou or the Early Han period (first millennium BCE). This landscape record leads to the suggestion that much of this dynamic pre-Han and Han Period environmental history can be related to management practices and economic policies of this extensive imperial polity.