Liao Yinan

I. Personal Profile

Liao Yinan was born in March 1994 in Yiyang, Hunan Province. He holds a Ph.D. in Science from Peking University and is a member of the Communist Party of China. He joined the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in July 2022 and currently serves as an Assistant Research Fellow at the CASS Key Laboratory of Archaeological Sciences and Cultural Heritage.

II. Research & Work

His research focuses on environmental archaeology, aiming to address archaeological questions from the perspectives of geomorphology and human-environment interactions. He has conducted environmental archaeology studies at several key sites and typical regions, including the Erlitou Site, Yinxu Site, Wangchenggang Site, Wangjinglou Site, and Yueyang City Site.

Principal Investigator for:

"Environmental Archaeology at Regional and Site Scales in the Central Plains," CASS Youth Initiation Project.

"Paleoenvironmental Study of Site Formation Processes," Youth Innovation Project, CASS Key Laboratory of Archaeological Science and Cultural Heritage.

"Survey of National Key Laboratories for Archaeological Science," 2024 Social Survey Project, CASS Youth Humanities and Social Sciences Research Center.

Key Contributor to:

"Geomorphological and Sedimentological Analysis of Archaeological Sites," CASS Innovation Project.

"Origin, Formation, and Development of Dryland Agriculture in Northern China," National Key R&D Program of China.

"Environmental Archaeology and Ancient Human-Environment Relationships," Major Project of the National Social Science Fund of China.

III. Selected Publications

First-author, SCI Journals: 

Landscape evolution and ancient settlement patterns in a small river basin of the Huangshui River and the prehistoric Wangjinglou City, Central China[J]. Quaternary Research, 2025.

Evolution of fluvial landscapes since the late Pleistocene at the Wangchenggang site of the Ying River Basin, Central China: Implications for the development and change of prehistoric settlements[J]. Geoarchaeology, 2023.

Landforms influence the development of ancient agriculture in the Songshan area, central China[J]. Quaternary International, 2019.

First-author / Sole-author, Chinese Journals:

Examining the boundary of the Erlitou Site based on stratigraphic borehole data[J]. Jianghan Archaeology, 2025. (First author)

Advances in environmental archaeology research at the Yinxu Site[J]. Archaeological Science (Vol. 8), 2024. (Sole author)

The geomorphological context for settlement location at the Wangchenggang Site[J]. Archaeological Science (Vol. 7), 2023. (Sole author)

Exploring the origin and development of dryland agriculture in northern China from a multidisciplinary perspective[J]. China Cultural Relics News, 2023. (First author)