Qugong and changing Lhasa Valley chronologies
Qugong (曲贡)
Renewed excavation near Lhasa revisits pottery, tools, deposits, and the chronology of later prehistoric communities. Settlement and burial evidence preserve different, partial records.
Highland landscapes, communities, and changing institutions
Plateau, valley, and connected regional landscapes
A central river valley connected varied productive zones. It was not a timeless capital landscape stretching unchanged into prehistory.
Political organization and community scale
The scale of cooperation and differentiation remains under investigation; no named kingdom is demonstrated by the classification.
Later transformation, living heritage, and modern reception
The 2020 field season and subsequent publication revise earlier models. Respect for burial contexts does not require assigning a modern identity to the people represented.
The re-excavation study distinguishes its results from inherited chronology.
Mortuary selection cannot stand for all households.
Different assemblages invite comparison, not one uniform plateau culture.
A concise, sourced timeline
These milestones are orientation points, not a complete history.
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Re-excavation
Joint archaeological fieldwork revisited the core site after about three decades.
Households, labor, language, belief, and material evidence
Languages named in this profile
- No directly attested local prehistoric language
Language family: Later Tibetan writing cannot be projected onto prehistoric pottery
New dates apply to sampled contexts rather than every earlier find.
Regional animal-management comparisons remain provisional.
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Sources used for this page
Prefer accountable excavation teams, heritage authorities, academic inscription editions, institutional collections, and community-linked conservation projects. Registered sources are HTTPS and exclude Wikipedia. Royal, religious, colonial, and modern national narratives require attribution.
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C1
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Middle and Late Pleistocene Denisovan subsistence at Baishiya Karst Cave
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New dating indicates intermittent human occupation of the Nwya Devu Paleolithic site on the high-altitude central Tibetan Plateau during the past 45,000 years
Ge et al., Science China Earth Sciences · Primary dating study · 2024
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C4
Comment on Permanent human occupation of the central Tibetan Plateau in the early Holocene
Zhang et al., Science · Published technical challenge to permanent-occupation interpretation · 2017
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Foraging and farming: archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological evidence for Neolithic exchange on the Tibetan Plateau
Ren et al., Antiquity · Primary plant and animal remains study · 2020
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Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies · Academic manuscript and inscription editions · Texts of the seventh-twelfth centuries; current critical corpus
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Early West Tibetan Buddhist Monuments
Austrian Academy of Sciences · Textual and architectural research project · Archived research project
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C8
Text, Art and Performance in Bon Ritual
University of Vienna, CIRDIS · Community-linked ritual and art research · 2012-2016 project
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Preserving earthen architecture: Lessons learned from two case studies
Fuchs, Milchin and Krist, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports · Primary conservation research · 2024
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The Sinja Valley Excavation in 2000 A.D.
Evans and Gibson with Acharya, Harward and Kunwar, Ancient Nepal 153; University of Cambridge archive · Primary Nepalese-Cambridge excavation report · 2003
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S1
The new chronology and material culture of a second millennium BC neolithic site in the heartland of the Tibetan Plateau: Qugong re-excavated
Archaeological Research in Asia · Primary re-excavation and chronology study · 2024
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S2
Human-animal-environment dynamics and formation of pastoralism in the southern Tibetan Plateau during the Middle-Late Holocene
Quaternary Research · Primary environmental and animal-economy study · 2023
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S3
Early agropastoral settlement and cultural change in central Tibet in the first millennium BC: excavations at Bangga
Lu et al., Antiquity · Primary settlement excavation · 2021
Editorial review: October 19, 2026