OBSERVATIONS ON PAINTED COFFIN PANELS OF THE TIBETAN EMPIRE (original) (raw)

Representations of Padmasambhava in early post-Imperial Tibet

Cathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer. Representations Of Padmasambhava In Early Post-Imperial Tibet. In: Tibet after Empire. Culture, Society and Religion between 850-1000. Edited by Christoph Cüppers, Robert Mayer and Michael Walter. Lumbini International Research Institute, Lumbini 2013, 2013

AHP 45: Vargas-O'Bryan, Ivette M. 2017. Review: The Dawn of Tibet. Asian Highlands Perspectives 45:98-104.

If you want to learn more about the pre-Buddhist heritage of Tibet and the Western Himalayas, one name stands out: John Vincent Bellezza. Unlike any other, we encounter a uniqueness in Bellezza's works, a breadth of detail, insight, and personal struggle that has been unsurpassed in archaeology and Tibetan Studies these days. Bellezza's numerous publications that include such groundbreaking works as Divine Dyads (1997), Calling Down the Gods (2005), the significant contributions of Zhang Zhung: Foundations of Civilization in Tibet (2008), Death and Beyond in Ancient Tibet, and the critical two volume set, Antiquities of Zhang Zhung (2010), have provided robust studies on Tibet's pre-Buddhist heritage in an unconventional style that at once incorporates his skills as an archaeologist with one of cultural historian, anthropologist, travel journalist, explorer, and storyteller. When I read this new work, my assumptions about Tibet as a land whose colorful history and civilization was most impacted by Buddhism shortly after the seventh century were shaken again. My attention was drawn to periods long before the Buddhist presence revealed through forgotten lands, writings, and ritual customs that point to a Tibetan civilization far more ancient, complex, and historically important on a global scale than I could have imagined. Presenting such complexity does come with a price because Bellezza's integrative, ambitious approach has its complications. Yet his unwillingness to restrict himself to the strictures and disciplinary boundaries of academia order to find answers on the ground, and to assert challenging connections may reveal some treasures of the past. From the very beginning in The Dawn of Tibet, Bellezza is particularly interested in the civilization known to Tibetan tradition as Zhang Zhung, which was based in western Tibet, also known as Upper Tibet. However, his search and discoveries go further back to a time that pre-dates and yet, impacts this mysterious civilization. This synthesis in ten chapters of his previous studies also provides a progression of his theories and an increasingly systematic documentation of findings following and surpassing other archaeologists and anthropologists before him. It also highlights the impact of Western and Chinese scholars and expeditions. The book begins with a brief synopsis of his personal history of exploration in Tibet and his documentation of around 700 sites. His documentation of monuments, rock art, and ruins are linked with old literary tales and contemporary ritual customs that form the basis for the history and culture of pre-Zhang Zhung and the Zhang Zhung civilization.

Response to Comment on " Permanent human occupation of the central Tibetan Plateau in the early Holocene "

Science, 2017

We show that Zhang and Li's sedimentological model for the Chusang travertine neglects the three-dimensional information from multiple outcrops and that their optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) age of about 20,000 years for the human imprints is untenable. We highlight the robustness of our chronology and explore reasons why Zhang and Li's OSL age is a gross overestimation of the real depositional age of the imprinted travertine.

POST-PLEISTOCENE TRANSFORMATIONS OF HUNTER-GATHERERS IN EAST ASIA The fomon and Chulmun

EAST Asia is an exciting area for the study of post-Pleistocene cultural transformation. Prehistoric hunter-gatherer cultures in East Asia, namely the Jomon culture of the Japanese archipelago (hereafter Japan) and the Chulmun culture of the Korean Peninsula (hereafter Korea) are known for their artistic pottery and other elaborate artefacts, the production and use of which were closely intertwined with changes in Jomon and Chulmun societies (e.g. Cho and Ko 2009; Kaner 2009). Furthermore, Jomon and Chulmun data allow us to test conflicting theories about the mechanisms of long-term culture change. Topics to be examined include the impact of the global and local climate change vs. human activities, domestication vs. environmental management, specialized vs. broad-spectrum economies, sedentism vs. mobility, egalitarianism vs. social stratification, and continuityvs. discontinuity to the following agricultural phase. Finally, but not least importantly, bioarchaeological data from these regions help us to understand not only the population history of these regions but also changes in health conditions and lifeways of these people (e.g. Fujita et al.. Rather than repeat the contents of these publications, this chapter concentrates on issues that are key to understanding the importance of East Asian data in world hunter-gatherer archaeology and anthropology. Emphases are on the issues that are relevant to recent discussions in the field of historical ecology (Balee 2006; Thompson and Waggoner 2013). These issues include long-term sustainability, collapses and subsequent recoveries of human socioeconomic systems, human impacts on the biosphere, and the examination of the processes operating among temporal scales of varying duration.