Bioarchaeology of Migration and Conquest in Warring States China

This study compares skeletons from two cemeteries from the Warring States period (475-221 BCE) in Shaanxi, China. The cemeteries were used by two ethnic groups attested in the Chinese historical and archaeological records: the Huaxia, or Chinese; and the Rong, an agropastoralist group that migrated from Western China, and which had a long and complicated history of contact and conflict with the Huaxia. At the current study sites, mortuary and biodistance analyses confirm the cultural and biological distinctiveness of the two groups. However, skeletal measures of health and diet show an increase in similarity over time, which supports historical accounts that the Rong eventually adopted sedentary agriculture and assimilated into the Huaxia ethnicity.