Hydrological Regime, Provenance, and Impacts on Cultural Development at Changsha Kiln Archaeological Site since 1300 a, Lower Xiangjiang River, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Lines 58-60: rephrase for clarity – merchants availed themselves of the river? Was the river considered part of the silk road or provided access to a land route?

 

Lines 107-110 – relevance of this discussion of water sources and directions? Are these tributaries upstream or down from the kiln area? What is their relationship to your site of interest?

 

Line 128 – terrace age?

Table 1 – Munsell colors for color designations?

Line 138 – is 200 a measurement or a sieve number?

Line 145 – Consequences = results?

Table 2 – is this a calibrated 14C date or the radiocarbon years? Can you provide the radiocarbon calibration diagram or sigma values?

Figure 3 – what are the units for REE values? The depth is assumed to be a simple linear change over time, assuming constant deposition. Is this a likely case, given only four dates (and one not perfectly in line with a linear model) and/or what additional information might support this model?

 

Line 381 (and in abstract) – by “artificial” do you mean “anthropogenic”?

Line 400 – REE what is less active? Alteration?

Line 543 and throughout: specify BP or specific calibration, “a” is not indicative of how this year is being measured

Line 552: First mention of Stone Pillar – what is the context here?

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Dear Reviewers,

We greatly appreciate the reviewers’ constructive comments and suggestions concerning our manuscript entitled: “Hydrological regime, provenance, and impacts on cultural development at Changsha kiln archaeological site since 1300 a, Lower Xiangjiang River, China”. Those comments were valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our manuscript. We have carefully studied the comments and provided a point-to-point response to them. Revised portions are marked in red on the paper. To make the response letter easy to read, we numbered and cited the newly added figures or tables differently from figure numbering in the original manuscript. we had our manuscript checked by a native English-speaking colleague. The significant corrections in the paper and the responses to the comments as flowing:

 

Point 1: Lines 58-60: rephrase for clarity – merchants availed themselves of the river? Was the river considered part of the silk road or provided access to a land route?

 

Response 1: Thank you for your suggestions! The “availed” has been replaced. The Silk Road had both land and water routes, and the ceramic trade during the Tang Dynasty relied more on the water route. The Yangtze River was part of the water route, connecting China with other countries.

 

Point 2: Lines 107-110 – relevance of this discussion of water sources and directions? Are these tributaries upstream or down from the kiln area? What is their relationship to your site of interest?

 

Response 2: Thank you for your suggestions! The main purpose of this paragraph is to express the characteristics of the Xiangjiang River basin: many tributaries, a dense water network, and well-developed transportation, and to classify them by flow direction. These tributaries are located in the upper reaches of the kiln area and are potential source areas for provenance.

 

Point 3: Line 128 – terrace age?

 

Response 3: Thank you for your suggestions! We did not conduct dating research on the terrace directly. However, according to the study of the soil layer at the bottom of the section, the Loess of the river terrace was the aeolian accumulation of the last glacial period.

Point 4: Table 1 – Munsell colors for color designations?

Response 4: Thank you for your suggestions! I'm sorry we didn't use the color card in our field investigation.

Point 5: Line 138 – is 200 a measurement or a sieve number?

Response 5: Thank you for your suggestions! “200” originally refers to the sieve number, which has been revised to “a sieve with a diameter of 75 µm”.

Point 6: Line 145 – Consequences = results?

Response 6: Thank you for your suggestions! “Consequences” has been modified to “results”.

Point 7: Table 2 – is this a calibrated ¹⁴C date or the radiocarbon years? Can you provide the radiocarbon calibration diagram or sigma values?

Response 7: Thank you for your suggestions! It is a calibrated ¹⁴C date (Calibrated with CALIB 7.01). Sigma values is 2σ age interval. In this study, the age-depth model was modified from Tan's publication.

Reference：

Tan, Z.; Mao,L.; Han, Y.; Mo, D.; Gu, H. Black carbon and charcoal records of fire and human land use over the past Cheek l 1300 years at the Tongguan Kiln archaeological site, China. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology: An International Journal for the Geo-Sciences, 2018, 504, 162-169.

Point 8: Figure 3 – what are the units for REE values? The depth is assumed to be a simple linear change over time, assuming constant deposition. Is this a likely case, given only four dates (and one not perfectly in line with a linear model) and/or what additional information might support this model?

 Response 8: Thank you for your suggestions! In our revised manuscript, we explained how the chronological framework was established and revised figure 3 again. We added all units in the title.

Figure 3. Vertical distribution change of the REEs (mg·kg^-1) and Parameter characteristics in the SZP section. The chronological framework of Chinese historical periods was based on the time of the demise of the dynasty (1332a.BP for the founding of the Tang Dynasty).

Point 9: Line 381 (and in abstract) – by “artificial” do you mean “anthropogenic”?

Response 9: Thank you for your suggestions! We have replaced “artificial” with “anthropogenic”.

Point 10: Line 400 – REE what is less active? Alteration?

Response 10: Thank you for your suggestions! This sentence has been revised to “The REEs are inactive during the weathering, transport, and deposition and mainly host and maintain the physical properties of the source rock.”

Point 11: Line 543 and throughout: specify BP or specific calibration, “a” is not indicative of how this year is being measured

Response 11: Thank you for your suggestions! We have checked the expression of all chronological data in the paper.

Point 12: Line 552: First mention of Stone Pillar – what is the context here?

Response 12: Thank you for your suggestions! Here is a spelling mistake, which has been corrected as “SZP”.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper provides a very interesting dataset  with a high potential for delivering important paleoenvironmental information and archaeological context for the pottery production and trade in China at the landscape and regional scale.

However, the paper presents a number of weaknesses that require attentions before it can be published in Land. The main issues are listed below by section, and further details are provided in the pdf attachhed:

Abstract:

The abstract is clear, but it includes some statements that are not discussed in the paper, such as, for example the mining and metallurgical effects. Please review and correct.

Introduction:

It is generally fine, but it could provide a bit more of historical context, that is then needed in order to understand parts of the discussion.

Methods:

Incomplete. This section must be completed with the proxies and calculations (e.g.  correlation analysis, ratios) used in the results and discussion sections.

Results:

Must be reorganized. The information on the graph and the tables is sometimes redundant and also repeated in the text. I suggest to simplify the description of results by not describing the REE concentrations (as it is easily seen in the graphs) and re-do the graphs for being more informative as suggested in the pdf file enclosed..

Discussion:

Needs to be entirely rewritten. Many facts are not discussed and important processes influencing REE concentrations and fractionation such as weathering weathering and OM dynamics are just dismissed. The discussion has contradictory statements. The reader cannot know what is the background or the evidence the authors use for many of the assumptions and conclusions.

Conclusions:

The conclusion section does not reflect the results of this paper, but lists facts that are drawn from previous studies and research.

Other:

Figure captions must be generally improved.

Correlation must be accompanied by significance and, of course, it has to be clearly steted if they are correlation or determination coefficients (r or r2).

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

 

Dear Reviewers,

We greatly appreciate the reviewers’ constructive comments and suggestions concerning our manuscript entitled: “Hydrological regime, provenance, and impacts on cultural development at Changsha kiln archaeological site since 1300 a, Lower Xiangjiang River, China”. Those comments were valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our manuscript. We have carefully studied the comments and provided a point-to-point response to them. Revised portions are marked in red on the paper. To make the response letter easy to read, we numbered and cited the newly added figures or tables differently from figure numbering in the original manuscript. we had our manuscript checked by a native English-speaking colleague.The significant corrections in the paper and the responses to the comments as flowing:

 

General comments:

Point 1: The abstract is clear, but it includes some statements that are not discussed in the paper, such as, for example the mining and metallurgical effects. Please review and correct.

 

Response 1: Thank you for your suggestions! We revised some statements and tried to correspond to the modified discussion.

1. Line 18: We have replaced “man-land” with “human-land.”
2. Line 24 -25: Considering the comments of the reviewers, we corrected “the mining and metallurgical effects” to “wasted from the ceramic production process.”
3. Line 27: “artificial” was corrected as “anthropogenic.”
4. “We provided some historical background and modified some statements. ” was deleted.

 

Point 2: Introduction: It is generally fine, but it could provide a bit more of historical context, that is then needed in order to understand parts of the discussion.

 

Response 2: Thank you for your suggestions! We provided some historical background and modified some statements.

1. Line 55-57: In order to be more relevant to the theme, “How human cultures have responded to hydrological and climatic changes in the past has been the focus of Past Global Changes (PAGES). ” were corrected as “Given the relationship of late Holocene people to hydrology and climate, the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment is critical to the comprehension of human communities.”
2. Line 64: “the 9– 10th centuries” was corrected as “the 9th – 10th century AD ”
3. Line 59: “the emergence of earliest Chinese ceramic manufacturing center” was corrected as “the earliest mass production centers of ceramics in China.”
4. Line 62-68: the "rich porcelain soil resources" are not only kaolin. The raw materials of Changsha kiln ceramics are a mixture of various soils. As a result, the quality of Changsha kiln ceramics is not as good as other porcelain kilns, and the price is low. This paper does not emphasize the ceramic manufacturing process, so it does not go further.

 

Supplementary References：

Project Team of Changsha kiln. Changsha Kiln. Forbidden City Press: Beijing, China. 1996.

 

5. Line 78-79: According to the reviewer's comments, "such as glaze composition and rare earth element characteristics of ceramics" was added to make this sentence more meaningful and correspond to the discussion's source section.
6. Line 87: “ions” was corrected as “ionic state of REEs.”
7. Line 100: “of trace elements” was added. The inquiry refers to trace elements and rare earth elements. Since rare earth elements are part of trace elements, only trace elements are added.
8. Line 126: “incorporated” was corrected as “combined.”
9. “The Silk Road had both land and water routes, and the ceramic trade during the Tang Dynasty relied more on the water route. The Yangtze River was part of the water route connecting China with other countries. Merchants of the Changsha kilns entered the Yangtze River from the Xiangjiang River and sold their goods worldwide through the Maritime Silk Road” were added for providing more historical context.

 

Point 3: Methods: Incomplete. This section must be completed with the proxies and calculations (e.g., correlation analysis, ratios) used in the results and discussion sections.

 

Response 3: Thank you for your suggestions! This paragraph has been re edited and a lot of details have been added.

1. 2 Geochemical element analyses:

• In the first paragraph, a large number of details of experimental steps are added and changed to " All samples were naturally dried in the laboratory. 5 g of each sample was ground and passed through a sieve with a diameter of 75 µm. The samples were dried in an oven at 105 ℃. After drying, 25 mg of the sample was weighed and placed in a homemade high-pressure sealed dissolution device. Concrete steps are as follows: (1) Add 0.5 mL of concentrated HF and evaporate to remove some Si, then add 1 mL of concentrated HF and 0.5 mL of concentrated HNO3 to dissolve at 190 ℃ and evaporate to a wet salt state. (2) Add 1 mL of HNO3 and evaporate to a wet salt to remove excess HF. (3) Add 5mL 30% (V/V) HNO3 and heat it sealed at 140℃ for 4 h. (4) After cooling, 1mL 500ng/mL Rh in-ternal standard solution was added and diluted to 50mL to reduce matrix effect and in-strument drift. "
• In the second paragraph, details are added, and descriptions and references such as correlation and ratio are added. “δCe, V/(V +Ni), and Ce/La ratios were selected as the main paleo-redox proxies. Rb/Sr and Sr were employed as proxies to infer the paleoenvironment. The La/Yb-∑REE diagram was used to determine the type of parent rocks in the source region. Correlations were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient(r). The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used for the statistical analyses (SPSS, version 26). ” were added.

2. 3. Chronology: “All samples were measured at the AMS⁠14C/OSL (Calibrated with CALIB 7.01) La-boratory of the Peking University in China. Four 1m steel tubes were driven into the profile, and the tubes were removed and wrapped in tinfoil after 24 h. ” were added. The model was built and successfully used in Tan’s publication(Tan et al., 2018).

Reference：

Tan, Z.; Mao,L.; Han, Y.; Mo, D.; Gu, H. Black carbon and charcoal records of fire and human land use over the past Cheek l 1300 years at the Tongguan Kiln archaeological site, China. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 2018, 504, 162-169.

3. Line: “fulfilled” were corrected as “carried out”
4. Line: “carbonates and organic matter” were added.

Point 4: Results: Must be reorganized. The information on the graph and the tables is sometimes redundant and also repeated in the text. I suggest to simplify the description of results by not describing the REE concentrations (as it is easily seen in the graphs) and re-do the graphs for being more informative as suggested in the pdf file enclosed.

Response 4: Thank you for your suggestions! Original figure 1 and original figure 3 have been merged to reduce information duplication. We regret that we have decided not to delete Figure 1 and table 1. The standardized distribution of REE chondrites in the four stages is very close, which can not well explain the change of provenance. Therefore, the obvious change of rare earth element concentration in the four stages is a reasonable basis for the change of material source. At the same time, the variation of sedimentary facies and average value is also a good auxiliary explanation. Considering the suggestion of reviewers, add standard variance to table 1.

Figure 3. Vertical distribution change of the REEs (mg·kg-1) and Parameter characteristics in the SZP section. The chronological framework of Chinese historical periods was based on the time of the demise of the dynasty (1332a.BP for the founding of the Tang Dynasty).

 

Point 5: Discussion: Needs to be entirely rewritten. Many facts are not discussed and important processes influencing REE concentrations and fractionation such as weathering weathering and OM dynamics are just dismissed. The discussion has contradictory statements. The reader cannot know what is the background or the evidence the authors use for many of the assumptions and conclusions.

Response 5: Thank you for your suggestions! We have completely rewritten the discussion section. And check the questions one by one. Retitle all graphs and add units. A large number of expression problems have been revised and references have been completed.

Figure 5. a: Vertical distribution trend of ∑REEs in the SZP profile, b – d: Variations of paleo-redox environment proxies(δCe, Ce/La, V/ (V +Ni)), e – f: Characteristics of the paleoclimate proxies (Rb/Sr, Sr, the unit of Sr is mg·kg−1) in the SZP section, h: the δ18O values from stalagmites Dongge cave, g: The winter half-year temperature anomaly (TA) for central-eastern (EC) China, i – j: Temperature and precipitation curves based on sporulation data from Lake Dajiu in Central Yangtze River. Vertical lines represent modern annual temperature (7.2 ℃) and precipitation(1535 mm), k: Sediment cores from Lake Punta Laguna, northern Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. The blue shaded area represents the high water level period in the Xiangjiang River Basin. Except 1300 a.BP, the nodes are the extinction time of the dynasty.

1. 1. The paleo-hydrological reconstruction of the Xiangjiang River:

• Stage IV (>310cm): Revised the chronological framework. It can be seen from table 1 that the soil below 310cm is the raw soil layer, and the observation is loess. It began to deposit more than 310cm, so it is speculated that the water level rose 1300 years ago.

Line 488-493: “Low Ce anomaly and V/V+Ni mean low water level. Correspondingly, The highest values of the climate proxies, Rb/Sr ratio (3.6) and Sr (50.4), also emerged on Stage IV. This means that the climate was very cold and dry during this period. These properties are are interpreted to indicate that under the dry and cold climate at that time, the reduction of precipitation reduced the water level of Xiangjiang River” were added.

• Stage III: The language has been reorganized.
• Stage II-2 and Stage II-1: Reedit the language and add details as required. In order to facilitate readers' understanding of Chinese dynasties, the time frame is added in Figure 5 to assist the explanation.

2. 2.1. Control factors of REEs composition:

I'm sorry we didn't cancel that. The premise of ree as source tracer is that ree is inactive during weathering and denudation and can keep the properties of source rock. Particle size, minerals and other factors affect the distribution of rare earth elements, so these factors need to be excluded. This method is widely used. Organic matter can't be stored for long in the acidic soils of southern China, so we generally don't discuss it.

Supplementary References：

Singh, P. Geochemistry and provenance of stream sediments of the Ganga River and its major tributaries in the Himalayan region, India. Chemical Geology, 2010, 269, 220-236.

Li, J.; Sun, C.; Zheng, L.; Yin, X.; Chen J.; Jiang, F. Geochemical characteristics of rare earth elements in the surface sediments from the Spratly Islands of China. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2017, 114(2), 1103-1109.

Gromet, L.P.; Silver L.T. Rare earth element distributions among minerals in a granodiorite and their petrogenetic implications. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 1983, 47 (5), 925-939.

Yamei, H.; Potts, R.; Baoyin, Y., et al., 2000. Mid-Pleistocene Acheulean-like stone technology of the Bose basin, South China. Science 287(5458), 1622-1626.

3. 2.2. Provenance inferred from the REEs characteristics

Stage III (1288 – 1094 a.BP) was mainly revised. “Abundant ceramic pieces and braised clay in the cultural layer indicated the frequent porcelain-making activities in Changsha kilns during this period. According to ceramic archaeology, the Changsha kiln reached its peak in the porcelain trade in the middle and late Tang Dynasty (1195 - 1043a.BP). The ΣREE of stage III had the largest change in all stages, and LREE/HREE, (La/Sm)N had the same trend (Figure. 3). The enrichment of LREE implied an increase in minerals such as apatite [100]. The Changsha kilns featured ceramics with copper-red glazed porcelain. The glaze of porcelain adopts apatite and cal-cite as flux. Cu, Fe, Mn, and other minerals are used as colorants for the glaze [77]. During porcelain production, a large amount of waste residue was dumped into the lakes in the kiln area, increasing REEs in sediments.”were added.

4. 3. Impacts of hydrological change on the Changsha kiln development

We modified the conclusion of the above speculation and combined it with historical documents. Some details have been simplified.

“The analysis of climate and hydrological environment evolution and provenance provided an essential basis for the derivation of human activities in The Changsha kiln in the Tang Dynasty. The relationship between the development of the Changsha kiln and the environment can be further analyzed based on historical documents. In Stage III (310 – 230cm, 1288 –1094 a.BP), China maintained a warm and humid climate under the control of the East Asian monsoon, and the Xiangjiang River was in a period of high water level due to high rainfall. In 1195 a.BP, a national war broke out in China, and many northern immigrants fled to the south [28] [89]. Changsha was one of the southern Chinese political, cultural, and economic centers” were added.

“In Stage II-2 (1094 – 890 a.BP), The dry climate and reduced rainfall caused the water level of the Xiangjiang river to drop (Figure. 6d). The lakes in the kiln area disappeared to form a floodplain, and the Changsha kiln was abandoned.”were added.

Point 6: Conclusions: The conclusion section does not reflect the results of this paper, but lists facts that are drawn from previous studies and research.

Response 6: Thank you for your suggestions! The conclusions have been rewritten and the unreasonable parts corrected.

“northern migrants entered the Shizhu area by boat. “were deleted.

Point 7: Other:Figure captions must be generally improved. Correlation must be accompanied by significance and, of course, it has to be clearly steted if they are correlation or determination coefficients (r or r2).

Response 7: Thank you for your suggestions! All diagram titles have been rewritten to include units and new details. Correlations were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient(r). The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used for the statistical analyses (SPSS, version 26).

Author Response File: Author Response.docx