Abstract: Ancient civilization is mostly founded on well-developed agricultural economies, with the Chengdu Plain considered to be the “civilization center” of the upper Yangtze region in China. From result of floatation and phytolith analysis on cultural layers and from two pits at the Baodun site, we obtained archaeobotanical knowledge that can be used to interpret local agricultural economies. In this study, we found abundant cuneiform bulliform cell and parallelbilobate short cell phytoliths from rice leaves, and double-peaked cell phytoliths from the glume of rice. A small amount of husk phytoliths from common millet were also present. Our results demonstrate that the general size of the cuneiform bulliform cell phytoliths are big and fit well with Oryza sativa L. ssp. Japonica. Thus, we conclude that the agricultural economy of the ancient Baodun people was based mainly on rice and supplemented by millet.

Key words: Chendu plain; Baodun site; Phytolith; Rice agriculture; Millet agriculture