Zhang Dongju

Zhang Dongju (; born ) is a Chinese archeologist and an associate professor at the College of Earth and Environmental Sciences of Lanzhou University. where she joined the group of climatologist Chen Fahu. Zhang's main research focus was on the Paleolithic sites of the Loess Plateau. She was a visiting scholar in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles in the United States from January 2008 to September 2009, and then at Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Germany from October 2009 to March 2010. She earned her PhD in physical geography from Lanzhou University in December 2010.

Zhang investigated the original discovery of the mandible by interviewing local people in Xiahe. Because the provenance is uncertain, the research team in 2019 acknowledged they could not prove the fossil came from the Baishaya cave. But they were able to match minerals on the Xiahe mandible to mineral deposits in the cave.

The mandible contained no productive DNA, but in the dentine of the teeth they found collagen proteins. In 2016 Zhang and colleagues started working with Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute to use ancient protein analysis.

In 2016, local villagers and Buddhists gave Zhang permission to start archeological work within the cave, which is a Buddhist sanctuary. to begin excavation in and around the cave in 2018. The team dug two trenches in which they found animal bones with cut marks and a large number of stone tools. It is also the first evidence they lived at high altitudes, as the Denisova Cave is only above sea level.

Zhang's classification of the Xiahe mandible as Denisovan is likely to cause scientists to reconsider the classification of other remains using the methods Zhang and her colleagues used.

Publications

Chen, F. H., Dong, G. H., Zhang, D. J., Liu, X. Y., Jia, X., An, C. B., Ma, M. M., Xie, Y. W., Barton, L., Ren, X. Y., Zhao, Z. J., Wu, X. H. & Jones, M. K. (2015). "Agriculture facilitated permanent human occupation of the Tibetan Plateau after 3600 BP." Science, 347: 248–250.

Morgan C, Barton L, Bettinger R, Chen FH, Zhang DJ. (2011). "Glacial Cycles and Palaeolithic Adaptive Variability on China's Western Loess Plateaux." Antiquity. 85:369-379. Elston R, Dong GH, Zhang DJ, (2011). "Late Pleistocene intensification technologies in Northern China." Quaternary International. 242: 401–405. Zhang DJ, Chen FH, Bettinger RL, Barton L, Ji DX, Morgan C, Wang H, Cheng XZ, Dong GH, Guiderson TP, Zhao H. (2010). "Archaeological records of Dadiwan in the past 60 ka and the origin of millet agriculture." Chinese Science Bulletin, 55 (16): 1636–1642.(en)

Bettinger RL, Barton L, Morgan C, Chen FH, Wang H, Guilderson TP, Ji DX, Zhang DJ. (2010). "The Transition to Agriculture at Dadiwan, People's Republic of China." Current Anthropology, 51 (5): 703–714.