ABSTRACT Provenance research on Neolithic stone architectural materials provides critical insights into prehistoric resource exploitation, population interaction, social organization, and human–land relationships. As a new National Archaeological Site Park, the Sidun site is the most important central settlement of the Liangzhu period in the northern Taihu Plain. This study uses integrated archaeological and petrographic analyses of its newly unearthed stone masonry remains to reconstruct Liangzhu inhabitants’ building stone exploitation strategies and discuss their exchange networks and social organization patterns. Results show that Sidun inhabitants mainly used local quartz sandstone from nearby hills and a small amount of exotic limestone for construction, preferring human‐transportable blocks. They likely used local water systems for stone transport and interacted closely with Nanjing–Zhenjiang communities. Significant public architectural concept differences existed between the northern Taihu Plain and Liangzhu Ancient city, possibly due to distinct subsistence strategies, local water networks, and longer stone procurement distances. This study advances the understanding of early civilization in the lower Yangtze and highlights the value of stone exploitation research for exploring Neolithic human–land relationships in East Asia.
Shen et al. (Fri,) studied this question.