Stratigraphy as Behavior: A Systemic Approach to Complex Settlement Sequences and Land Use Transformation at the Daxie Site, Coastal China

Discontinuous stratigraphy is often treated as an excavation and dating problem, especially in long-occupied coastal settlements where construction fills, refuse deposits, water-laid sediments, and reworked surfaces repeatedly overlap. This article argues that such deposits can instead reveal human action when read as outcomes of linked formation processes. Focusing on the Daxie site on China’s eastern coast, this article develops a systemic approach that connects layer description with construction, maintenance, dumping, infilling, sealing, and reuse. Two case studies are examined: the construction, expansion, and integration of Qianshanyang-period salt-production platforms, dated to ca. 4400–4100 b.p., and a Song–Yuan waste disposal sequence in which an inherited depression was transformed through retaining walls, repeated dumping, post-depositional sorting and silting, and final leveling. Together, these sequences show complex stratigraphy as a material record of labor, spatial regulation, production, settlement management, coastal exchange, and long-term land use change.