The Nepalese Himalayas in Prehistoric Context: A Review of their role in Eurasian Exchange Networks and Domestication

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores the evidence for settlement and mobility within and across the Nepalese Himalayas, focusing on the period from 30 kya to the emergence of early states in the 1st millennium BC. Although trade routes around the Himalayas, such as those of the silk roads, have shaped a sense of the mountains as a marginal and inaccessible landscape, I argue that the high‐altitude/high‐relief landscape is by no means a barrier to exchange and mobility. Though relatively little archaeological fieldwork has been undertaken in the Himalayas of Nepal, this article presents the tentative evidence for: (1) the movement of prehistoric exchange items and (2) settlement activity and exchange infrastructure. In order to achieve this wider contextual evidence is drawn from East and South Asian exchange networks from the 14th to 1st millennia BC, particularly with respect to plant dispersals, and domestication episodes for which there is increasingly compelling biomolecular evidence. This evidence is collated in order to steer archaeological research questions for the Himalayan region, asking: what evidence is there for the development of settlement, mobility and exchange in the Nepalese Himalayas during prehistory?