3000 years of agriculture in a valley of the High Himalayas

Abstract

3000 years of agriculture were investigated in the valley of the Jhong river situated north of the main chain of the Himalayas in western Nepal at 3000–4000 m asl. During excavations carried out by the Institute for Prehistory of the University of Cologne (part of the DFG-Schwerpunktprogramm „Siedlungen und Staatenbildungen im tibetischen Himalaya”) in collaboration with the Nepal Department of Archaeology, more than 300 samples with plant remains were collected, dating from 1000 cal. B.C. up to today. Palaeoethnobotanical research was accompanied by investigations of today's methods of local agriculture and of the recent vegetation. Immigrants —perhaps from the Tibetan Plain—settled in the Jhong valley at the beginning of the first millennium B.C. Six cultivated taxa were already present in the first occupation period: probably two harvests per year were possible at this time as they still are today. During the following five archaeological periods, ten new cultivated taxa were found. In a burial cave of the second prehistoric period, fruits and seeds imported from the subtropical lowlands were found among the grave goods. From the more than 100 plant taxa identified in the botanical samples, more than 50 also occur in Europe.