High-altitude dietary adaptations on the interior Tibetan Plateau in prehistory : Archaeobotanical, paleoproteomic, and stable isotopic evidence
The Tibetan Plateau represents one of the most challenging regions that our species has ever permanently settled. Despite the environmental constraints, an increase in the abundance of settlements and burials suggests that there was a remarkable population expansion onto the highland plateau after c. 3500 BP. This demographic shift has been widely linked to the transition to more productive agropastoral systems. However, our understanding of subsistence shifts within the interior plateau has been limited by discussions of uniform spatial-temporal patterns, much of it based on scattered evidence and speculation.
This thesis aims to explore details of how ancient societies in different ecosystems of the interior Tibetan Plateau developed novel agropastoral lifeways to feed the region’s population expansion between c. 3500 and 600 BP. I specifically focus on the adaptative mechanisms of crop cultivation, dairy pastoralism, and more general dietary practices, to answer two primary questions: 1) How did populations living in different subregions of the interior plateau integrate novel crops, animals, and management techniques to tackle local environmental challenges? and 2) When did the transition to novel agropastoral systems occur in different parts of the interior plateau? I employ a multiproxy approach, integrating archaeobotany, paleoproteomics, and stable isotope analysis to study archaeological materials collected from 39 sites located in ecologically diverse areas of Tibet and southwestern Qinghai.
New results challenge existing pan-regional narratives of unified agropastoral adaptation strategies across the interior plateau, suggesting instead that communities living in different ecosystems and social contexts of four subregions followed their own trajectories in establishing specialized agropastoral systems according to local environmental constraints and cultural settings.
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