The lower Yangtze River valley has widely been regarded as centres of rice domestication, tracing back to 10,000 cal a BP or even earlier in the late Pleistocene. Despite recent advances in both evidence of genetics and archaeology had shed light on the process of rice domestication, including its initiation, acceleration, and completion, the spatial pattern and intra-regional differences of rice domestication in the lower Yangtze River remain unclear. Here, rice bulliform phytoliths were selected as a proxy of the domestication trait and applied to Jingtoushan, Hemudu, Yushan and Xiawangdu sites, ranging from 8000 to 5000 cal a BP in the Ningshao Plain, along with accumulated phytolith data in the Jinqu Basin and Taihu Plain. Rice domestication in the lower Yangtze River exhibited a geographic mosaic pattern rather than the presumed synchronous process among different regions. Rice domestication was initiated during the Shangshan culture (10–8.5 cal ka BP) in the Jinqu Basin and increased rapidly, which reached even higher level than the subsequent Jingtoushan culture (8.3–7.8 cal ka BP) in the Ningshao Plain. During the middle Holocene, rice domestication in the Taihu Plain was generally higher than that in the contemporaneous Ningshao Plain which may finish hundreds of years later. In contrast to the accomplishment of rice domestication around 6000 cal a BP in the Taihu Plain, the delayed process of rice domestication in the Ningshao Plain may result from frequent marine inundation induced by sea-level fluctuation during the Jingtoushan and Hemudu cultures (7–5 cal ka BP).

长江下游流域被广泛认为是水稻驯化的中心，其历史可以追溯到距今一万卡甚至更早的更新世晚期。尽管遗传学和考古学证据的最新进展揭示了水稻驯化的过程，包括其起始、加速和完成，但长江下游水稻驯化的空间格局和区域内差异仍不清楚。本文选择水稻泡状植硅体作为驯化性状的代表，并应用于宁绍平原8000至5000cal a BP的井头山、河姆渡、玉山和下王渡遗址，以及金衢盆地和太湖积累的植硅体数据。清楚的。长江下游的水稻驯化表现出地理镶嵌模式，而不是不同地区之间假定的同步过程。水稻驯化始于金衢盆地商山文化（10~8.5 cal ka BP），并迅速发展，其水平甚至高于随后的宁绍平原井头山文化（8.3~7.8 cal ka BP）。全新世中期，太湖平原的水稻驯化程度普遍高于同时代的宁绍平原，可能要晚数百年才能完成。与太湖平原在 6000 cal a BP 左右完成水稻驯化不同，宁绍平原水稻驯化进程的延迟可能是由于井头山文化和河姆渡文化期间海平面波动导致频繁的海洋淹没所致（7-5卡尔卡BP）。