China is one of the few primary loci of plant and animal domestication and of emergent agriculture in the world (Bellwood 2005; Smith 1998). Chinese society has been predominantly agrarian since antiquity, and, as in other parts of the world, agriculture formed the economic foundation for the rise of civilization in China. Among the most important crops and animals known in early China (rice, millet, soybean, pigs, dogs, and perhaps chickens) were domesticated indigenously, whereas wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and horses were introduced, already domesticated, from elsewhere. The origins of domesticated cattle and water buffalo are unclear at present; these species were surely domesticated separately in time and place, but exactly where and when those transformations occurred remain moot. Unlike other chapters in this book that present archaeological information in a temporospatial order, in this chapter, we focus on the domestication of each species just mentioned. The purpose of this arrangement is to provide a database for easy discussion in the following chapters.