Foraging and farming: archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological evidence for Neolithic exchange on the Tibetan Plateau

Lele Ren,Jade D'Alpoim-Guedes,Haiming Li,Guolin Li,Yishi Yang,Fengwen Liu,Fahu Chen,Guanghui Dong,Minmin Ma,Jiyuan Li,Rowan K Flad,Dongju Zhang,Yujia Liu

doi:10.15184/aqy.2020.35

Abstract

Archaeological research has documented the migration of Neolithic farmers onto the Tibetan Plateau by 4000 BC. How these incoming groups interacted, if at all, with local indigenous foragers, however, remains unclear. New archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological data from the Zongri site in the north-eastern Tibetan Plateau suggest that local foragers continued to hunt but supplemented their diet with agricultural products in the form of millet. The authors propose that, rather than being grown locally, this millet was acquired via exchange with farmers. This article highlights how indigenous foragers engaged in complex patterns of material and cultural exchange through encounters with newly arrived farmers.

Highlights

During the Early to Mid Holocene, agricultural intensification promoted the dispersal of farming groups across the Old World (Bellwood & Renfrew 2002), extending their territories to areas previously only occupied by foragers
New archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological data from the Zongri site in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau suggest that local foragers continued to hunt but supplemented their diet with agricultural products in the form of millet
By the fourth millennium BC, such sites seem to have spread to the eastern margins of the Tibetan Plateau (Dong et al 2013)

Summary

Introduction

During the Early to Mid Holocene, agricultural intensification promoted the dispersal of farming groups across the Old World (Bellwood & Renfrew 2002), extending their territories to areas previously only occupied by foragers. Fifty-one sites of the Zongri Culture (3650–2050 cal BC) are known in the eastern Gonghe Basin of the north-eastern Tibetan Plateau, all located above 2600m asl (Chen et al 1998) (Figure 1) These sites have yielded tantalising evidence for indigenous foragers who were not replaced by incoming farmer groups and who were not passive recipients of farming practices. Two key pottery types were recovered at Zongri: 1) Small ceramic vessels consistent with those found at sites in the Majiayao heartland in the upper Yellow River region. These are wheelturned, highly burnished and decorated with painted whorl patterns. We use additional data to argue that the millet found in the Zongri cultural area was not grown locally, but was introduced through exchange with farmers living in neighbouring, lower-lying areas

Materials and methods

Results

Discussion