The Making of Agro-pastoral Landscape of the Tibetan Plateau: A Zooarchaeological Perspective

Summary

The vertical ingredient of the Tibetan Plateau plays a unique role in making of the highland agro-pastoral landscape. We divide the Tibetan Plateau into three eco-altitudinal zones: areas below 3,000 m.a.s.l.; areas between 3,000 and 4,200 m.a.s.l.; and areas above 4,200 m.a.s.l. Today, pastoralists and farmers utilize different faunal and floral taxa in the three zones, partly as risk aversion strategies. In this paper, I review the zooarchaeological evidence dated between 6,000 and 1,000 BP from the Tibetan Plateau to explore the chronology of the expansion of animal husbandry to the highland plateau.

By the late second millennium BC, herd animals such as horse, goat, and cattle began to appear in regions below 3000 m.a.s.l. It is not until the first millennium AD, herding animals expanded to regions above 4,200 m.a.s.l.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21867