New evidence for the terminal pleistocene funerary-associated ochre use in southwestern China

Although archeological findings have suggested the long history of ochre exploitation by humans, the cultural implications of prehistoric funerary ochre remain unclear due to a lack of in-situ preservation consisting of ochre, artifacts, and human skeletons. This paper aims to investigate how humans in southwestern China interacted with ochre minerals in the terminal Pleistocene. We collected a set of red remains from the Qingshuiyuan Dadong site, dating to ca. 11 cal ka BP, which have been identified as hematite using multiple geochemistry techniques. Combined with microscopic observation of grave goods and ethnographic investigations, our study suggests that the ochre was consciously applied to stone artifacts and placed in burials as a possible component of funerary rituals at that time. By further integrating their archeological context, we inferred the use of ochre could be a cultural link in a broader regions.

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Publication Details

Journal
npj Heritage Science
Published
2025-11-16
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s40494-025-02140-9
Primary Topic
Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

New evidence for the terminal pleistocene funerary-associated ochre use in southwestern China

Tengfei Wang, Xiangli Wang, Chunyin Zeng, Yueming Niu et al.
npj Heritage Science
Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
article

New evidence for the terminal pleistocene funerary-associated ochre use in southwestern China

Tengfei Wang, Xiangli Wang, Chunyin Zeng, Yueming Niu, Siran Liu, Ning Fan, Yanyi Chen, Wenjing Zhang, Yinghua Li, Xinglong Zhang, Hui Cen
article en

Abstract

Although archeological findings have suggested the long history of ochre exploitation by humans, the cultural implications of prehistoric funerary ochre remain unclear due to a lack of in-situ preservation consisting of ochre, artifacts, and human skeletons. This paper aims to investigate how humans in southwestern China interacted with ochre minerals in the terminal Pleistocene. We collected a set of red remains from the Qingshuiyuan Dadong site, dating to ca. 11 cal ka BP, which have been identified as hematite using multiple geochemistry techniques. Combined with microscopic observation of grave goods and ethnographic investigations, our study suggests that the ochre was consciously applied to stone artifacts and placed in burials as a possible component of funerary rituals at that time. By further integrating their archeological context, we inferred the use of ochre could be a cultural link in a broader regions.

npj Heritage ScienceVol. 13(1)
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR), Shandong University (CN), Sichuan University (CN), Wuhan University (CN), Université Paris Nanterre (FR), Guizhou Institute of Biology (CN), Wuhan Business University (CN), Wuhan Technology and Business University (CN), Archéologies et Sciences de l’Antiquité (FR), Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology (CN), University of Science and Technology Beijing (CN)
China Scholarship Council, Wuhan University, China Geological Survey, National Social Science Fund of China
Openalex Percentile: Top 62%
Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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