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Humans have exploited and used starchy plant organs as their main food for a long time. Starch is composed of long chains of glucose molecules. In the form of grains, starch is found mainly in roots, tubers, and seeds. starch grains can preserve well for tens of thousands of years in sediments. Because different plants produce distinct forms, the identification of plants is possible by means of the comparison with the morphological features of starch grains.Starting from 1970s, Starch grain analysis is a new tool of archaeobotanical investigation . In the past decades, starch grain analysis had been successfully employed to study the origins and dispersals of agricultural crops, artifact function, and paleoclimate reconstruction in America, Australia, and so on.This paper examined fifteen slabs excavated from Peiligang Site,Egou Site, Shawoli Site, Shigu Site, Gangshi Site, and more than 1800 starch grains were found. To identify the ancient starch grains extracted from the slabs, we collect some modern plants selectively in China. Meanwhile, we also consult to some references of modern samples.According to the analysis of characteristics, identifiable starch grains recovered from the slabs can be classified into four types at least, which were acorns, the wheat tribe (Triticeae Dumort.),foxtail millets(Setaria italica) or common millets(Panicum miliaceum) or job’s tears(Coix spp.)and tubers. And the proportion of the four types is 42.80%, 23.89%, 15.15%, 0.4% respectively. In Addition, other starch grains, their characteristics being not obvious, need further identifications.We can draw two conclusions from this study. First, the slabs of the site of Peiligang culture may be multifunctional. Second, acorns may be the important source of botanic food at Peiligang time. The experimental results can provide some new ideas and new clues for Chinese agricultural origin research. Meanwhile, multiple plant species and combination also coincide with warm and wet environment in this area. In this sense, they provide new materials for environmental archaeology research.
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