Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Environ. Archaeol.
Sec. Archaeological Isotope Analysis
Volume 3 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fearc.2024.1398209
This article is part of the Research Topic Stable Isotope Analysis of Archaeobotanical Remains View all 5 articles

Into Thin Air: prehistoric intensive crop management in high altitude western Tibet

Provisionally accepted
Melissa Ritchey Melissa Ritchey 1*Li Tang Li Tang 2,3Petra Vaiglova Petra Vaiglova 4Hongliang Lu Hongliang Lu 5Yufeng Sun Yufeng Sun 6Michael Frachetti Michael Frachetti 1Xinyi Liu Xinyi Liu 1*
  • 1 Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, United States
  • 2 Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, Jena, Thuringia, Germany
  • 3 Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany
  • 4 Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
  • 5 Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
  • 6 Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, Beijing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    High-altitude conditions on the Tibetan Plateau are often depicted as an inhospitable environment for conventional farming, yet evidence shows that communities in western Tibet grew ecologically hardy crops such as 6-row barley (Hordeum vulgare) by at least the 1 st millennium BCE, at locations about 4000 meters above sea level (masl). However, little is known about the specific cultivation strategies and culinary traditions that these agropastoral communities developed. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions of grains inform growing conditions and provide much needed insight into the cultivation strategies in such a unique environment. We use δ 13 C and δ 15 N values of archaeologically recovered barley remains to investigate past watering and soil-management strategies. Our results infer high labor investment in manuring and watering in barley farming. This suggests an intensive cultivation system in Western Tibet, 1000 BCE -1000 CE, despite the high-altitude pastoral landscape.

    Keywords: Barley cultivation, stable isotope analysis, cultivation strategies, Archaeobotany, tibetan plateau

    Received: 09 Mar 2024; Accepted: 14 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ritchey, Tang, Vaiglova, Lu, Sun, Frachetti and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Melissa Ritchey, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, United States
    Xinyi Liu, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.