The Neolithic Culture and Paleogeographic Environment Evolution in the Eastern Jianghuai Area

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Although the article is based on a very particular region and for a particular archaeological/geography public, the article shows the relevance of interdisciplinary and research collaboration. I think that is its strength, and that particular aspect needs to be made more obvious in the article.  Due to the nature of the article, and the information presented, it could help with more illustrations about the main points of the article in order to have a better understanding.

Author Response

For the sake of better understanding, we revise the title, abstract, relative parts of main body, figure1 and figure 2 and add an attached table. For details see the revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I have no specific comments and/or suggestions for the authors; it was a pleasure to read the article. In my opinion, this is well done study fully supported by the data which put together paleoenvironmental and human record of the area; this explains how local cultural development was driven by natural events and processes. Once again, this is a good research and it is fully deserves to be published with Land.

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer’s praise and recheck the manuscript. For the sake of better understanding, we revise the title, abstract, relative parts of main body, figure1 and figure 2 and add an attached table. Some grammatical mistakes and ambiguous expressions in main body are corrected and a new reference [59] is added.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper presents interesting methods and results that could be of interest for the study of settlement dynamics in coastal areas.

It should be published with some better structuring of the text:

- The Abstract is perhaps too descriptive of the various moments, it does not describe methodology or conclusion

- The article lacks a clear definition of objectives and methods, to be placed in a separate section or in the introductory part;

- In the definition of the state of the art, the chrono-cultural framework is not referred to and is only mentioned from line 225 onwards. 

- It is not clear whether section 2 refers to the current situation or to the middle Holocene.

 

In formal terms:

- Figure 2 lacks a more general framework map;

- It would be interesting to include cartography of the coastline evolution during the Holocene

- The title could be improved: "Holocene and Neolithic" aren't two different concepts.

 

 

Other comments:

The recurrent reference to including sites in the " Top Ten New Archaeological Discoveries in China" in an international scientific paper is not understandable.

As for the reference to the founding of the People's Republic of China (line 39), I think this comment could be in Acknowledgements.

 

Finally, the whole article presents a certain environmental determinism. It is not clear from the discussion what impact agriculture has on the landscape of the region

 

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer’s comments and advices very much. The main revision work are as follows:

• Re-write the abstract. Simplify the description of each period in the abstract. Clarify the research methods used in this paper.
• The research objectives and methods are explained in the part of introduction.
• The chrono-cultural framework is described in the introduction and is listed in the “attached table” at the end of main body.
• The section 2 refers to the current situation and the relative text in this section is revised.
• Redraw figure 1 and figure 2. The figure 1(Location of study area and the coastline in different period) is separated out of Asia map and the relative culture sites and the coastline in different periods is highlighted. The figure 2(Location of sampling site and sand hills) is separated out of China map and the sand hills in study area are marked.
• Change the title for the purpose of emphasizing the dynamic processes. The new title: The Neolithic culture and Paleogeographic environment evolution in Eastern Jianghuai Area.
• Delete the relative descriptions of the “Top Ten New …” in the main body. For details see part 4 (Line 237-238 and Line 252-253). Change the sentence as “Since the 1970s, especially in this century …” (Line 40).
• Revise the relative description. The expression about environmental determinism is no longer present. For details see the end of abstract (Line 25-30), part 4 (Line 265-277) and part 5 (Line 308-311).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf