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Archaeobotanical remains from the mid-first millennium AD site of Kaerdong in western Tibet

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Abstract

In this study, we present the preliminary result of archaeobotanical investigation at Kaerdong in western Tibet. The result shows that agropastoralism with combined strategies of foraging, hunting and fishing was in practice at the location between approximately 455 and 700 cal. AD. Our results also show that herding animals grazed at meadows above 4300 m above sea level (masl), and dung was used as fuel. The presence of a rice grain together with spikelet bases indicates that rice was a component of food resources possibly as a result of a trade and exchange system. In addition, tatary buckwheat grains were also recovered at the site.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Professor Gary W. Crawford for his help in the editing and comments of earlier manuscripts. We thank Jingang Yang from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for his help in identification, Feng Yang and Shuai Li from Sichuan University and Xiawu Kaxian from Tibet University for their help in collecting and processing the soil samples. We also appreciate the two anonymous reviewers for their comments to improve the quality of our manuscript. The research was supported by “General Programs of the National Social Science Fund of China (16BKG001 and 14BKG005)”, “Major programs of the National Social Science Fund of China (12&ZD151)”, “The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities—Sichuan University (skyb201206)” and “Research Initiation Funds for introduced talents of Sichuan University”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Archaeology, Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, 29 Wangjiang Road, Chengdu, 610064, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China

    Jixiang Song & Hongliang Lu

  2. Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, USA

    Zhengwei Zhang & Xinyi Liu

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  1. Jixiang Song
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Correspondence to Hongliang Lu.

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Song, J., Lu, H., Zhang, Z. et al. Archaeobotanical remains from the mid-first millennium AD site of Kaerdong in western Tibet. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 10, 2015–2026 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-017-0521-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-017-0521-6

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