Abstract ID: 3.9755 | Not reviewed | Requested as: Talk | TBA | TBA

The Tibetan Plateau represents one of the most challenging regions that our species has ever permanently settled. Despite the environmental constraints, archaeological evidence suggests that the shift to an agropastoral economy facilitated human expansion into the Tibetan highlands around 3500 years ago. However, due to the fragmentary data, previous research on this agropastoral transition has been limited either to proposing broad subsitence adaptions, or to piecing together a uniform temporal shift in crop and fauna use. To overcome these issues, this research analyzed diverse archaeological materials (e.g., seeds, human bones, teeth, dental calculus, and animal bones) from 39 sites across the interior Tibetan Plateau, by using archaeobotany, palaeoproteomics, and stable isotope analysis. This research has generated, to date, the largest palaeoeconomic dataset in the region. New results not only identified the earliest barley-based farming and dairy consumption there, but also, for the first time, systematically mapped out the diverse dietary adaptations within four subregions of the interior plateau. This research challenged the existing uniform subsistence models for Tibet, shedding light on the complexity of human responses to different high-altitude landscapes.