THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
presents a
Distinguished Scholars Lecture Series
seminar
Thirty Millennia of Tibetan Prehistory
Until recently, there has been no authentic sense of a Tibetan past. Recent research by Tibetan,
Chinese, and western scholars, however, has revealed a deep antiquity of human occupation of the
plateau. In this presentation I will explore what is known of the Tibetan past by a close examination
of three major themes: the peopling of the plateau, the advent of the Neolithic, and the emergence
of social complexity. Data sources to be discussed include archaeology, ancient and modern DNA,
linguistics, and texts from the pre-Buddhist and Buddhist eras. From these disparate sources, I will
attempt to craft an initial draft of Tibetan prehistory and place it into a regional context.
by
Dr. Mark Aldenderfer
4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Room 1118, K.K. Leung Building
The University of Hong Kong
ALL ARE WELCOME
Dr. Mark Aldenderfer is Dean of the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts at the University of California,
Merced, where he is also a professor of anthropology. He is presently the editor of Current Anthropology, the
premier general journal in the field, and in the past has edited Latin American Antiquity and the SAA
Archaeological Record. As an archaeologist, he has specialized in the prehistory of the world’s high plateaus,
and has worked extensively in the Andes of South America and more recently, on the Tibetan plateau, where
he is conducting research ranging from the Paleolithic to the Buddhist era. He has published or co-edited
nine books, most notably Montane Foragers (University of Iowa, 1998), and has published over 100 articles,
book chapters, and reviews.