Dining at the Great Settlement Shang: Everyday meals, ordinary people, and urbanism at Yinxu, Late Shang China (ca. 1250–1046 BCE)

Scholarly understandings of Yinxu, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, have long concentrated on elite and ceremonial narratives, with the everyday lives of its non-elite population largely overlooked. This study recenters ordinary people with a particular attention on daily practice of eating at the neighborhood level. Through stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of different human skeletal tissues with contrasting turnover rates, the research examines inter- and intra-population dietary variability. We offer new insights into food stability throughout the Yinxu occupation, achieved through the intensification of a millet-centric agricultural system rather than through crop diversification. This strategy was a key condition that facilitated the population aggregation accompanying the rise of the city. Furthermore, this study demonstrates significant dietary variation linked to social identity, including the first evidence for distinct nutritional patterns among sub-adults and craft specialists. Moving beyond protein intake as a simple marker of status, these findings position foodways as an everyday practice through which identities were shaped and social distinctions were reproduced at the neighborhood level.