Sha Po’s First People: Neolithic Fisher-Hunter-Foragers

This chapter begins the chronological journey through Sha Po’s human story in the earlier Middle Neolithic, providing the necessary archaeological background and context by referencing discoveries made across the wider Hong Kong–Pearl River Delta region (a format also employed in Chapters 5–7 inclusive). The backbeach evidences a major break in activity until the Later Neolithic and we suggest that the patterning of activities is suggestive of a relatively low intensity usage of the site by a small-scale community of fisher-hunter-foragers. Artefactual evidence is also used to suggest that by the end of the Neolithic the Sha Po community, like others across the region, was exhibiting features attributable to a rise in social complexity, which probably reflected both internal change and the intensification of contacts with agropastoralist groups to the north of the Pearl River Delta.