AIA Archaeology Hour with Mark Aldenderfer

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 10:00: Tibetan Plateau, Dr. Mark Alendos, Sally McGrath, University of California (UC)
2. 10:00 – 20:00: Tibetan Plateau, Samzong, Yarlong Valley
3. 20:00 – 30:00: Tibetan Plateau
4. 30:00 – 40:00: Yarlong Valley, Samzong, Songstan Gampo, Tibetan Plateau
5. 40:00 – 50:00: Tibetan Plateau, Loba people, Samzong, Tashilumpo
6. 50:00 – 1:00:00: Cambridge University Press, Matthew Capstein, Sam Van Shik, Samzong

Notable quotes from "AIA Archaeology Hour with Mark Aldenderfer"

• Good evening everybody and it is evening where I am. Maybe not where you are. My name is Sally McGrath and I'm speaking to you tonight from Frederickton campus of the…

  about Sally McGrath · at 0:00

• Our AIA chapter. I am thrilled tonight to introduce Dr. Mark Alendos, distinguished professor emeritus at the department of anthropology and historical studies at the University of California. Dr. Alden graduated with his.

  about Dr. Mark Alendos · at 1:09

• Interest in high altitude cultural adapt adaptations ranges from societies in the Andes to those in the Tibetan Plateau and the Ho Himalayan Ark. He truly is the expert. So with no more ado, I am pleased to turn this event over to Dr.

  about Tibetan Plateau · at 2:23

• Following. Here's where I'm going to be taking you tonight. We're first going to upper Mustang in Samzong, a particular archaeological site that's in the highlands of Nepal.…

  about Samzong · at 11:08

• That comes into play sometime in the middle of the 7th century. His name is Songstan Gampo. his Nepali wife is on the left shoulder and his Chinese wife is on the right. What…

  about Songstan Gampo · at 30:11

• The mortary facilities one sees in the Tibetan plateau at a place like Tashilumpo where the Daly where the punchin llamas are buried. So I think that to conclude this…

  about Tashilumpo · at 46:21

• To pull that out. But there are some really good histories of Tibet. there's a book by Matthew Capstein called the Tibetans which was published back in the early as that gives…

  about Matthew Capstein · at 51:16

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Sally McGrath — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:06
• Dr. Mark Alendos — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:13
• Songstan Gampo — Person · 1 mention · first at 30:16
• Loba people — Person · 1 mention · first at 47:03
  People who've given me money to do all this work over the years. I especially thank the Loba people from upper Mustang at Samong and from other Tibetan peoples I worked with…
• Matthew Capstein — Person · 1 mention · first at 51:20
• Sam Van Shik — Person · 1 mention · first at 51:36
  Might be fun to read about. there's another book another history by an author named Sam Van Shik that wrote a book called Tibeta History which is a little bit more recent.…

Companies & orgs

• AIA — Company · 3 mentions
• University of New Brunswick — Company · 1 mention · first at 0:11
  Name is Sally McGrath and I'm speaking to you tonight from Frederickton campus of the University of New Brunswick in beautiful New Brunswick, Canada. I am the president of the…
• University of California (UC) — Company · 1 mention · first at 1:21
  Distinguished professor emeritus at the department of anthropology and historical studies at the University of California. Dr. Alden graduated with his BA from Wake Forest…
• Wake Forest University — Company · 1 mention · first at 1:28
  Historical studies at the University of California. Dr. Alden graduated with his BA from Wake Forest University and from there moved to Philadelphia University where he completed both his MA and PhD.
• Cambridge University Press — Company · 1 mention · first at 51:59
  You're if you're hanging on by your fingernails, I have a book coming out from Cambridge University Press in, not too distant future that's going to be a Tibetan, review of Tibetan archaeology. And so that will cover some of this.

Places & events

• Tibetan Plateau — Place · 14 mentions · first at 2:29
• Samzong — Place · 6 mentions · first at 11:13
• Yarlong Valley — Place · 3 mentions · first at 11:21
  Archaeological site that's in the highlands of Nepal. We'll then go to the Yarlong Valley, which is just south of Lassa, and you'll see the dates right there of 650, CE. We're…
• Tashilumpo — Place · 1 mention · first at 46:26
• Dulan — Place · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Good evening everybody and it is evening where I am. Maybe not where you are. My name is Sally McGrath and I'm speaking to you tonight from Frederickton campus of the University of New Brunswick in beautiful New Brunswick, Canada. I am the president of the local um AIA chapter and I'm also a member of the society's committee. We have a small but very enthusiastic and loyal group of supporters that includes faculty members, students, retirees and archaeological enthusiasts. Along with our AIA sponsored lecture, we take our lecturers to the local high school where we hope to foster an interest in archaeology.

0:49 We also offer a local lecture in the spring term and this year we intend to extend our outreach to the public by organizing the showing of an archeological themed film such as the div with Ralph Fines. But that's enough about me and our AIA chapter. I am thrilled tonight to introduce Dr. Mark Alendos, distinguished professor emeritus at the department of anthropology and historical studies at the University of California. Dr. Alden graduated with his BA from Wake Forest University and from there moved to Philadelphia University where he completed both his MA and PhD.

1:40 Since obtaining his PhD, he has garnered numerous accolades, including the 11 trust visiting professor at the University of um Cambridge, the keynote speaker at China International Conference of Shang Culture Studies, Beijing, keynotes addressed at the third international mountain conference in Austria. plenary address at the 16th seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies for our Czech Republic and the list goes on. He has also authored or co-authored several books and numerous articles. His interest in high altitude cultural adapt adaptations ranges from societies in the Andes to those in the Tibetan Plateau and the Ho Himalayan Ark. He truly is the expert. So with no more ado, I am pleased to turn this event over to Dr.

2:43 Mark Alden. Thank you. Right. Okay, it's yours. Okay, good evening, good afternoon. Welcome. Thank you for coming this evening to the AIA archaeology hour which in this particular case will be archaeology in the Tibetan and Himalayan afterlife. Sally, thank you very much for the very kind introduction. It's a like I said, it's a great pleasure to be here this evening. Mark, can you Yes. One more click to do the the use slideshow. Where is that? At the top on the top. Oh, slideshow. There we go. Okay. Sorry for everyone for that. You know, even though we've all been on Zoom for the last five years, sometimes it still gets a little tricky to actually set up.

3:43 We're good now, right? Yes, we are good now. Awesome. So, in any case, uh we're going to be talking about Tet in the Himalayas tonight. I've had the distinct pleasure to be able to work on the Tibetan plateau as well as in the Himalayas of Nepal for the last 20 years or so. And I'm really anxious to share a story with you tonight about the Tibetan and Himalayan afterlife. Do we believe that the a belief in the afterlife is a human universal? And what I mean by that is is that are there are there things about human nature that crosscut cultures? No matter what culture we live in today, what ones we might have had in the past, is the belief in an afterlife one of these universals. So when I think about an afterlife, and I think many of you obviously have thought about that in your own context of life as well, it's about thinking about where do we go after we die? Are we somewhere else when

4:44 we die? Are we present but still with our ancestors when we die? Is there a place where this afterlife exists or is there nothing in terms of the afterlife? Turns out that looking at the idea of this being a human universal, it's not so clear that there's a a complete agreement across all cultures that we in fact have studied that there's a strong belief in the afterlife. But what we're going to do this evening is we're going to move ahead looking at what we are fairly certain is the Tibetan and Himalayan beliefs in the afterlife. But we're not looking at Buddhism tonight. We're looking at pre Buddhist or nonboot societies in the Himalayas and on the plateau.

5:31 But before I launch into looking at what the specifics are about our lecture this evening, I'd like to ask a few or point out a few questions or comments about what archaeology actually tries to do when they look at the afterlife. Now, I think there's one thing that I think is very important to stress at the beginning of a lecture like this. I've stressed it to numerous students over the course of my career, and it's very simply this. If you want certainty about interpretations of anything, do not become an archaeologist. Become an accountant because that's the only way that you can really be certain about the way in which those table of numbers actually work. We archaeologists have to work with a great deal of error. We work with a great deal of um interpretation and we do our very very best to work with the empirical data that we have at our disposal to make interpretations about the past. But it's

6:29 very clear that what we do is the following. We first look at the material remains of where people have been buried, their tombs or other kinds of mortuary facilities. We often look at their bodies and look at the context within which their bodies have been placed within these facilities. We look at the nature of artifacts surrounding them. That is in the tomb context itself perhaps or around it. That is in terms of other tombs that might be there or other kinds of archaeological indicators that give us some context about why these tombs are placed where they are and what they might signify. And then finally, of course, we look at the artifacts that we have recovered from these contexts and then begin to make uh suppositions about what these artifacts might in fact mean. Many of us work in cultures that do not have text and so it becomes much more difficult to make these interpretations about the afterlife in

7:25 these contexts. But many of us do in fact have text. And so what you'll see tonight, you'll see a combination of um of possibilities. We'll have some text informing some of the ideas that I put forward and other ideas I'm going to put forward without the context of text to help us out. So as an example just to give you a sense of how we can think about going through this process. Let's take a look at the this is the Lord of Son. This is a reconstruction of the Lord of Son from can't remember exactly where the the magazine was that did this but I show you this image because we're looking at the Lord of Son's tomb context. Now, surrounding him before this site was actually excavated was a massive mudbrick construction. And so, you can see him down at the bottom of that construction. He's surrounded by other individuals that have been placed in this tomb context with him. I don't make the assumption that they're

8:21 necessarily going to an afterlife, but we may well want to consider that if in fact we have other evidence to support those ideas. If you look around him as well, you'll see that there's all sorts of different artifacts that are found in this burial context. Uh there's a lot of pottery that you see there. You see in his particular tomb context, and we're not showing the the great wealth that he was surrounded with, but he had fabulous wealth around him. He had shells and beads and gold and silver objects of one kind or another. So clearly the lord of Sipon was a quite interesting and important person. And so from this context, the the large burial mound that surrounds him, the context of his tomb, which we're looking at right now, the artifacts surrounding him that theoretically went with him to an afterlife. We use all of these objects to in fact then begin to infer processes by which we can infer, well, did the

9:20 Mochce culture really believe in an afterlife? What are we really looking at? And I think in this particular case we can say yes we have no text to support that idea. But in other hand on the other hand it's a fairly clear assumption about what's going on here. If these people are human sacrifices we really don't know that. It's quite likely but you take my point that is there's a great deal of interpretation that's going on with this with this process of inference about thinking afterlife in different archaeological cultures around the planet. So with that in mind, let's take a look at then what we're going to be looking at this evening. Um let's first take ourselves to the Himalayas. This is one of my favorite slides from the NASA Indian subcontinent. On the left you see the Tibetan plateau. On the right hand side you see the Indian subcontinent. I show you this slide because on the one hand when we talk

10:19 about the Himalayas there's extraordinary linguistic and cultural diversity across that entire Himalayan arc. It means that there are there more than 500 distinct languages. There are variety of different cultures that inhabit the valleys and the lowlands of this region. So on the one hand it seems kind of fanciful to be thinking about possible continuities from across the Himalayan arc. thinking about is there a common continuity between for instance the Himalayas of Nepal and the Himalayas of the Tibetan plateau in terms of their beliefs in the afterlife. What I'm going to try to show you though is that I believe there are certain continuitities that we can observe no matter how complex this particular cultural setting happens to be. So with that in mind, let's take a look at the the following. Here's where I'm going to be taking you tonight. We're first going to upper Mustang in Samzong, a particular

11:15 archaeological site that's in the highlands of Nepal. We'll then go to the Yarlong Valley, which is just south of Lassa, and you'll see the dates right there of 650, you know, CE. We're also going to two at the same time take a look at an archaeological site in the northeastern Tibetan plateau called Dulan. These will be the basis upon which I make arguments about whether or not we have any sense at all about a Tibetan or Himalayan afterlife. And these are the themes I'd like you to focus on as I go through this conversation with you tonight. I'd like you to think about the containers for the deceased. Notice I'm trying to avoid the use of a term coffin or tomb.

12:00 You know, we use those frequently, but I just want you to think about where is the deceased, where that individual, where has that person been placed? I'd like you to think about evidence that we might have for what appears to be animal sacrifice. I'll then direct your attention to wealth objects. That is, are there things inside the mortuary context that suggest that there's a degree of of wealth? that is the ability to have acquired certain kinds of exotic or special artifacts that be that end up with the deceased in the mortuary facility. Given the specifics about the Himalayas, I'm going to ask you to think about gold and whether or not gold and how gold is used for the uh for the individual in that facility. And then finally, because we have some text here that helps us interpret some of the some of the material we find in the archaeological record, I'm going to ask you to think about animals as being

13:00 guides or protectors for the deceased as they pass into another realm of existence. Let's go to Samzon. This is a a small village located in the very high elevations of upper Mustang in Nepal. Um most of the people have left this village now because water has become scarce. They live on the other side of the mountain here. But this is a very typical uh Tibetan style village within this region. The site though is not actually underneath their habitation but it's actually a bit downstream. And this image gives you an idea about what the archaeological site of Samzong looks like. So you're looking at a massif. You can see then in the in the shading of the front of the massif, you see some dark circles and dark spots. And what you're looking at then are going to be what are called shaft tombs that were located within this particular uh massie near the village of Samon itself. A closer look shows you what

14:05 these look like. And so you begin to get a sense of how difficult it might in fact have been to do any kind of archaeological research in this context. So these are the 10 tombs. The 10th one is off the image right here. But you get an idea about the different context of these tombs. And you can even begin to get a sense of some of the shafts that went down to from above the ground surface. They're dug down and then a tomb is dug into the facade of this massif. And in particular, I'm going to direct your attention to tomb number five, which is going to be the focus of our discussion about a upper Mustang Samzong uh Himalayan afterlife uh theorization. Archaeology was not easy in this context. You'll see the individual there getting ready to go into or coming out of tomb 5. Um I had to be repelled down into these tombs. Uh you can't spend very much time there because they're relatively shallow. Uh

15:05 they were opened up by a landsl I'm sorry an earthquake that caved off the facade of this massif. You can see the remains of that land of that earthquake down below. And unfortunately what happened to the context of the site was that is as that massif was uh shaken by this earthquake the actual archaeological context within each one of these tombs is very highly mixed. And so what we found is that when we entered them, the they were filled with debris from the from the earthquake that took place. The roofs caved in. A lot of debris fell into them. A lot of the material that might once have been inside them fell down to the ground surface below. But the good news is we actually have a fair amount of archaeological data then that we can use to address this question of uh thinking about a Himalayan afterlife in this region.

15:58 So, let's first turn to containers. So, what you're looking at here is a lovely wooden box, and it is relatively small in size. It's about a meter on each side. Um, the individual that was once interred here was inside this box, but again, because of the earthquake, much of that interior context is gone. So you'll notice one thing very quickly about this image is that there are there's painting on the wall of this box and I'm not going to interpret that now but I'm going to come back to that when we begin begin to take a look at the idea of animal protectors and animal guides. So this is an extraordinary find. No other similar mortary facility has been found in Nepal. There are examples of these wooden coffins or containers, if you will, found in Western Tibet, but none of them have painting. And that's the real advantage then then that I have about making an attempt to infer a Himalayan afterlife

17:02 with this because not only then do we have this container with an image, we also have text that may well be useful in interpreting what that afterlife actually might look like. Let's turn our attention now to the idea of animal sacrifice. So I show you an image here from a nearby archaeological site that had much better context. It was not destroyed by an earthquake and the the remains found in it were actually relatively well preserved and in fact they were able to really come up with a very clear plan of how individuals are placed into those tombs and then how they were then sealed up.

17:43 What you're looking at here then are goat and sheep heads that were found inside the tomb. And there's more than I don't know 35 or 40 within this particular mortuary context. When we go back to Samzon, what we find are not only goat and sheep, but we also have horse and we also have yak. And so clearly there are animal remains that have been placed inside these tombs. Uh most of them are skulls. There are some long bones that were found within that context as well. Um, we believe these are sacrifices, but again, this is part of the interpretation that goes along with thinking about how these things actually functioned for the deceased or for people who lived with the deceased when that individual was alive. But these fairly clearly suggest to me animal sacrifice, their presence inside the facility.

18:34 wealth. Well, wealth in Samsung 5 is relatively limited. So, keep in mind that what we're looking at is a relatively, you know, I wouldn't call it impoverished, but I would call it a context in which the the acquisition of wealth was certainly took place, but a very different kind of wealth than what we're going to see later on when we move ourselves to the Tibetan plateau. So, what you're looking at right now are glass beads. And most of these beads were likely draped over the individual's head in the context of the coffin or the mortar, the box, if you will. And they were in braids of one kind, another interspersed with animal fibers, mostly local sheep and goat, maybe a little bit of horse as well. But what's important about these beads is is that they come from very distant places. So the ones labeled Pakistani clearly are someplace within the lower Indis Valley. The black beads in the upper right hand corner are

19:36 actually really quite fascinating because they look like they come from either southern India or all the way down from Sri Lanka into Thailand. Um the green beads in the center register are from Cisania which is a now in the modern country of Iran but was once a powerful entity that controlled much of the central a the western part of central Asia during this time. And then we've got other beads from other places as well including China. So these beads aren't wealth per se, but what they are is a very clear indication that the individual that was buried within this mortuary context or perhaps as kin was able to obtain beads from a fairly far-flung set of regions across um either South India, Southeast Asia into Central Asia as well. One of the most curious finds that we discovered was this bit of fabric. It doesn't look like much, but for us it's really impressive. This is Chinese silk,

20:37 and it's a relatively coarse weave. You'll see other Chinese silks later on, but what's fascinating is that we actually had some for the individual in Samsung 5. You see the the red or orange color is a cineabar that was used to color this. You know, it's hard to tell exactly what this was in terms of the mortuary context. What but what we believe it was buried around the individual's torso within that coffin context. But again, look where it's from. It's from somewhere in China. We don't know exactly where. probably from the Tibetan plateau via China, but you know, its actual origins are unclear, but we're certain it's Chinese silk because of the structure that we've looked at and published on the micro structure of the weaving that you see right there. Finally, the last wealth object that we have here is a fairly small, you know, bronze disc. And you can begin to see that it's corroded to some extent.

21:37 But you can also see then there are a number of decorations upon it. And when you look at the exemplar as one might find across central Asia in the Tibetan plateau, you do not see these things anywhere in South Asia. You see them on the Tibetan plateau itself or also in distant places in Central Asia where there are very similar artifacts found um of this type. So the wealth objects then that this individual had were relatively limited but they in indicate connections and ties to distant parts of the world that surrounded this relatively isolated high valley in northern Nepal. But perhaps one of the most fascinating finds that we recovered was this gold and silver mask. Um don't get too excited. The amount of gold that's required to make this mask is about the size of a P. So, it's not an impressive amount of gold, but what is important about it is that it's actually there.

22:36 And so, we believe that this gold and silver mask was placed on the face of the individual uh that was surrounded by that headdress that I pointed out with the beads. And this gold was the only golden object found within that mortar facility in Samsung 5. But it really speaks to some kind of of statement about um individual the individual's life and how this this life was translated into a golden mask that you can see here. Other golden masks though were found in other parts of western Tibet. You can see the one on the left is a relatively large mask, very similar in size to the one we found in Samzon. And then you can see the one on the right is a very tiny mask, maybe only two or three inches in size. My point here is that there's a very widespread distribution of golden masks found in tomb contexts like this from Mustang all the way in the east all the way out to Kyrgystan um at the ver burial site called

23:42 Shamshi. This individual doesn't look very happy having been placed in the tomb. But one thing I'll direct you to in the context is look at that motif drawn on his face. You will see that motif again. My point though is that look, this is a tradition that goes across a very large swath of central Asia and in the Tibetan plateau and begins to give us some sense that this is an important aspect of mortuary ritual across this vast region. Finally, let's turn our attention now to the the container itself and whether or not we see any kind of evidence to suggest that there are animal spirits, guides, or protectors that might have been helpful in helping this individual cross into some kind of afterlife. So, this is a fairly washed out version uh image of the site to the coffin as we found it. Let's take a look at an enhanced version. All we've done here is simply to pop out the colors uh using

24:45 Photoshop. You can see the orange at the top. You can see the white down below. You can see that tree motif that I showed on that mask a moment ago. On the right hand side of the image, then on the left, you see a similar kind of tree in white, but with droopy leaves. I'll direct your attention to what appears to be an individual in the center, upper center of that in orange. And below him, what you will see is a white orb. What that white orb is, we'll speculate on in a moment. But take a look at this image now and see if you can see if you agree to some extent with the things that I see. Let's do a mirror image of that.

25:25 Let's reverse that image and show exactly what's going on here. So, if you took a look at that orange image on top, you can see that that individual appeared to be a stride of something. Well, we have a white image as well that I have interpreted as both in the orange and white case as a horse. And I think that it's, you know, very crudely drawn, but I think it's fairly effective to give an idea about, yes, this is a person, a stride horse, especially visible in the orange image, but somewhat less visible in the white. But what I'm going to do now is show you.

26:00 All right. Well, let's see if we can see anything else about the individual in the white that might help us interpret what's going on here. So, here's a closeup then of that white image. You'll see the head of the horse on the right. And if you look very carefully from that notch in the wood straight up to the top of the coffin, you'll see what appears to be a humanlooking face with slits for eyes. And if you look down below that, you will see what appears to be a torso. You can see that the right arm is bent at the elbow pointing downward. And if you work really hard at it, you can see that the left arm is going out from the shoulder and then pointing up.

26:43 I'm interpreting this, I think, uh, fairly fairly clearly to me anyway, that the individual in orange up top was this person that was in Sam Dog 5's coffin was alive and a horse rider that was buried in this facility. This is him after his death. Why I think this is the case is is that there are texts then that describe some of the animal protectors and spirits and guides that will take the dead individual safely to the afterlife. And one of those texts described very clearly the white horse that we see here taking that person into the afterlife.

27:22 You may or may not dis you may or may not agree with me on this, but I think I'm fairly certain in looking at this as a very clear symbol of a representation of the individual in Samog 5 going off to whatever the afterlife happened to be for him. This is where he was going, being taken on the back of that horse. One more image then and I will leave you with more speculations perhaps than I can offer answers for. This is one image that I had to work on very hard for for a long time. I've tried to convince my colleagues of this, but I think if you really work with your imagination on this on this image, you will see another spirit guide represented here. I direct your attention to those black arcs that then go from the center point of the white from that notch if you will that then move their way up to the upper leftand corner of the image. So I'm going out on my limb here and what we're looking at is I believe

28:27 is a tiger. And why do I think it's a tiger? Well, the text is very clear that one of the spirit protectors that helped the individual after his death to get to the afterlife on the white horse was in fact a tiger that would help protect him from evil entities that would try to impede his progress into the afterlife. I feel pretty good about this tiger. Other people don't, but I think I see eye, I see ear, and I see the stripes of that orange tiger in this image. So, I feel fairly confident then that what this tomb is actually telling us about the Himalayan afterlife in Upper Mustang is it's very consistent with what we know of text written later about a white horse carrying the dead individual to the afterlife and that individual being protected by a spirit animal, in this case, a tiger.

29:23 So now let's go to the other example that I'd like to talk about this evening and that's going to be the Tibetan plateau. What I'm offering you in this image is the is the extent of the Tibetan plateau at its height. It's roughly the the way in which the Tibetan Empire controlled much of this region of Central Asia around the end of the um seven I'm sorry the end of the 8th century. You can see Lassa. If any of you have been there, you know where I'm talking about here. But look at the extent of this place. It's quite large, but it didn't begin that way. And that's really what's important here to to stress. This gives you an idea where we are. Now, let's take a closer look at where we're going. We're going to talk about the first true emperor of the Tibetan Empire that comes into play sometime in the middle of the 7th century. His name is Songstan Gampo. his uh Nepali wife is on the left shoulder and his Chinese wife

30:23 is on the right. What we're going to be looking at then when we think about Sunstan Gampo, the first emperor of this of this polity is that we're going to look at his mortterary facility where he was buried after his death. And to do that then we're going to the tomb context in the Yarlan Valley which you see in the center uh center of this image. If you've been to Lassa, there's Lassa up in the upper left hand side. And then tombs are down just off the Yarlong Valley. Uh I'm sorry, the Yarlong Sano Valley, which you see as that river crossing the center of the image and then descending down into the Yarlong area. Um for the tomb context itself, here's a Google Earth image then of the way in which the tombs of the Tibetan emperors and kings looks like today. And so if you look on the kind of the middle of the image kind of arcing up to the left hand side, you'll see these massive rectangular structures

31:21 that were created uh as the tombs for these kings. And the tomb that we're going to go to tonight to begin this exploration of whether or not there's an afterlife that we can see easily in the archeological record uh for Seno is this tomb right here in the red circle. This was likely the first tomb constructed in the Yarlan Valley. The rest of them come afterward and were finally the last one was constructed sometime in the mid the mid 9th century give or take. This is what the tomb looks like today when you go to Lassa I'm sorry the Yurlong Valley and get a sense of the landscape and the construction. Notice the massive size of this construction.

32:05 It's immense. Um on top of it is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery and temple that was established sometime in the 13th century. It has nothing to do with the tomb itself. The problem with understanding what's going on with the moratory facilities and the ideas that we might construct about the Tibetan past um in terms of the archaeological record is that none of these tombs have ever been excavated. They might have been looted sometime in the past, but no professional archaeological work has ever been done at a single tomb of any of the Tibetan kings. Other tombs have in fact been investigated, but none of them are of the scale and size of the ones that we're looking at here with Songsto and some of the other uh people that were buried, the other emperors that were buried in some of these other tombs.

32:56 So what we have to do now is to take a look at is there some archaeology that might be a guide to us and the answer to that is yes and then of course we're going to rely on some of the text some of which was written about the same time the just after the death of Samson Gampo and then some of the text then we'll look at is also written somewhat later these will be guides to give us a sense of what we might expect to find should any of these tombs of the Tibetan kings be excavated and whether or not they contain any evidence at all that will help us understand something about an afterlife here. So we go up to Dulan. If you remember that's in the northeastern corner of the Tibetan plateau. This is a massive mound very similar to the one we see in the Arlo Valley. It was excavated by Chinese archaeologists in the 1980s into the 1990s. Very very similar construction to the others. And when we take a look at

33:54 what was actually discovered, here's the container that was found within it. That is it. Unfortunately, the tomb was very significantly looted sometime in the past. And so there's very little that we actually can reconstruct about wealth or other other ways to interpret what this tomb might have been like. But you get a sense then of the complexity of the of the tomb container that once existed in this context. And we believe that someone very important was buried where that individual is standing holding the shovel. We don't have that individual though at this point. There's the container. Let's now take a look at the idea of animal sacrifice just for a moment. So here's a Google Earth image then of what you're again the tomb context. You can see the the trapezoidal tomb context itself. You can see a slope then that descends down toward the bottom of the image. And if you look carefully, you can see a number of lines

34:53 that is trenches that cross in front of it. There I can't remember how many there are here. I think there's nine in total. And across those nine trenches are in each one of the trenches there are 16 pits. And within each one of these pits, we find very clear evidence of animal sacrifice. So what you're looking at here, these are horses that are buried here. Uh whether they were all placed in the tomb context when the individual was placed within his container is not clear. It could also be the case that uh people would come back and revisit the site on different occasions, do more sacrifices, place animals into other pits. But the evidence is very very clear in this particular instance that animal sacrifice was very important for this particular individual. And we think that it's going to be important when we take a look at Sunstston Gampo's burial context as well. Wealth, well, most of if there was anything

35:55 really special in terms of gold or silver, jewels, any other objects of any kind that might signify wealth on that kind, uh, they're long gone. But what was abundant in the tomb context were these silks, Chinese silks in particular. And you notice they're quite wellmade. They're quite distinct from the Chinese silk that we found in the tomb of uh Samzong, but they've give you a very clear image of what these Chinese silks were like. There are other silks that came from Cisania as well. That is from India. I'm sorry, from Iran. So, there was a lot of these silks that the tomb looters decided they really weren't worth their trouble, but they left them behind. But clearly, this is an indicator of wealth for this individual.

36:40 Okay, with that background in mind, then let's take a look then at Sunsten Gampo, that tomb context in particular. Now, we need to turn to a bit of archaeology and a bit more text to make an interpretation about whether or not we see any kind of afterlife being represented in this context. This is a reconstruction by a famous tibologist Eric Hard that suggests that this is what the tomb context itself might look like below the surface of that mound. And we really don't know if this is accurate. Uh it's not really important to know whether it's entirely accurate, but what it's giving you is a very clear indication that it's a very complex construction. Most of what you're looking at here is likely to have been underground. that is below the ground surface of that tomb that I just showed you or that that mortary facility that I just showed you. And if you take a look at some of the very specific objects that were

37:42 found in that, let's not spend much time on top. Let's take ourselves down below because down below where it says Banso, what you're looking at then is this is the exact location where Sunstengo should have in fact been buried. So if you look at that standing figure there, that's actually supposed to be a figure in gold that was representative of the king himself. If you look at that vessel that in front of him, that's supposed to be a copper container or vessel that he was placed within after he was imbalmed and then disposed of in the context. And then he's surrounded by a variety of other objects as well, parasols made out of silks and what have you. We get this information not again from archaeology but from text. Let's take a look at so that was his container. Now let's take a look at the evidence that we have for animal sacrifice. So the texts are really very clear about sacrifice. Horses, yaks,

38:43 dogs, goats, sheep. All of these were brought to Songsten GO's tomb and they were then sacrificed. The remains were placed in the tomb for a period of time. Then they were taken out again and then eaten in a vast number of feasts that accompanied this process. But if you remember what you saw at Dulan in terms of the trenches that we saw there and the individual pits that might in fact have been part of an animal sacrifice representation. This is a this is a t tomb not in uh the Yarlong Valley. It's a tomb somewhat further to the east, but it has the same basic set of ideas. a rectangular structure massive in construction and you can take a look at the that the lines of trenches some of which have been excavated and in this particular case show the remains of animal sacrifices within them so animal sacrifice looks to be very important here though didn't have any trenches in front of his

39:41 tomb other kings though did and so here's a other tombs at some of the later ones as well they're very faintly seen here. But the blue the white lines are showing you where these trenches might have been. Unfortunately, we have not excavated those. So, we really don't know if they actually contain animal sacrifices or not, but I'm guessing that they they in fact do. So, we've got a fairly clear parallel then with Dulan and what might have taken place here. What about Songs and Gampo? Well, we only know what the text says about animal sacrifice within the tomb itself.

40:18 Let's take a look at some of the wealth then that might have been buried with Songstan GPO. I just give you two examples here to to give you a sense of the true ex I would say excess that is supposed to have been buried with him on from the northwest of the uh Tibetan Empire. And what they did was they brought him a gold I'm sorry a a horse and rider executed in gold that was meant to stand up and be part of the burial context with Sonen Gampo who is in the center. On the left hand side you see a from a a an offering from the Indian polities further to the south.

41:03 And what this is supposed to be is a solid gold set of chain mail that was in tuned with Sen GO himself in the center. Then you see him as well. You see that gold statue that was once there with him. You see the container there in front of him. So gold is accessibly used in this context. Exactly how other than these representations is not very clear but the gold is there with him uh as part of the the offerings that went with him into the we presume into his afterlife. Finally, do we have any evidence at all of any sort of spirit guides or animal protectors that might have accompanied Songstan GPO or any other uh Tibetan Empire in their trek to the afterlife? And the answer is well, it's really indirect. That is, the texts suggest yes, he was taken up to heaven.

41:58 Well, that's not very clear archaeological evidence, but I do have something to show you from something from the place called Guolimi in northeastern Tibet as well, not terribly far from the Duan tombs of wooden panels of a coffin that was excavated there. Now, these these panels are not from a very wealthy person. That is, these are lovely representations. I'll show you in a moment what they signify. So there was not a great deal of other wealth that was found within this context. But what I think these coffin panels show us is something that is very similar to what I think happened at Samzong in terms of an animal spirit protector helping the the emperor go off into the afterlife. Here's a drawing by Chinese art historians and archaeologists that describe what they see in these these panels. And so it's a very elaborate set of rituals, rights, you know, all sorts of different activities taking place.

42:59 The way in which this seems to be interpreted is is that what we're looking at is a representation of many of the features of the life of the individual that was once buried inside that coffin. And where I'm going to direct your attention now though to is a very specific part of the image which is now in the red circle. And if you look carefully at the individual in the mostly in the center, you'll see him with a black hat. He looks like he has a beard. That's not entirely clear. He's on a horse. And you know, you don't see the color of this horse, of course, in this drawing. There's an individual riding before him with certain on a horse as well with other symbols contained in his hand. the individual behind him is doing something else that's not part of what we believe is part of the ritual process here. But, and I'm asking you to be really careful here. If you look really careful then at

43:55 the color image of the individual riding the horse, my cursor is going to go around the the backside of the horse right here. Here's the individual's headdress right here. His face is represented here. You know, I'm I'm just going out on a limb and saying, well, he's riding a horse. It might have been white at one point, but he's riding a horse off into what I think is the afterlife. Very, very similar to the individual in Zenzong 5. I don't see any animal protectors here, but things change. Of course, this is a different This is a different setting. But yet I would argue that there is in fact continuity between Samson 5 and what might have taken place with Hongsten gpo. So let's do some continuities inclusions and inclusions conclusions then to bring this to a close. So I think we can see that despite there are very different scales of of wealth and prestige and status being implied here,

44:54 there's some pretty clear parallels here as well. We've got um containers. they are filled with wealth such as they are for the individuals. Um we see them in both Samsung and we see them in Seno's case. I think we do in fact have a trans Himalayan understanding of an afterlife. That is I think the parallels are clear enough for me to feel very comfortable that even though there are these differences in scale, there are these similarities that cross cult the cross sorry cross both time and to some extent well certainly space and to a lesser extent time within this region. But I'd also point out that to some extent Buddhism it shows up then within the next 200 years on the Tibetan plateau.

45:38 It does change things rather dramatically in terms of the way in which humans are disposed of after their death. But there's some fascinating parallels that continue as well. That is when you take a look at the scriptural record, the textual record of Tibetan Buddhism after the advent of Buddhism, what you see is that high lamas were placed in containers that we call chortans or stupas. Many of them were coated in gold. Many of them were in fact buried with other kinds of wealth objects that surrounded them. So even though the belief system changed rather dramatically from one that one might call non Buddhist or even pagan one can also say that there are clear similarities that persist over time even into the present day if you think about the mortary facilities one sees in the Tibetan plateau at a place like Tashilumpo where the Daly where the punchin llamas are buried. So I think that to conclude this conversation is

46:33 yes we see an afterlife yes we see interesting continuities and I think that once if ever those tombs are excavated on the Tibetan plateau in the long valley we'll find some absolutely fascinating discoveries about other aspects of the of the afterlife of Tibetan kings that we really can't see directly from text itself and so with that I simply like to say thanks to the people who've given me money to do all this work over the years. Um, I especially thank the Loba people from upper Mustang at Samong and from other Tibetan peoples I worked with over the course of my career as well as many Chinese and Western contact colleagues and of course to the AIA for the support of this lecture and with that I'm finished. Um, thank you very much for your attention and if there's time and interest I'll answer questions if that's possible. So, thanks again.

47:31 Thank you very much, Mark. That was fascinating. I'm just going to open the the uh question and answer and see what people are asking. Not opening. However, I have a question while I'm waiting for this to open. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Okay. Um, is there any indication of the the afterlife being in the west? Because on the scheian end of the um uh the steps, the idea is that horses were the animal that carried you to the west where the sun set and the sun where the sunset was the afterlife. Mhm. So is there any indication there in Tibet of the same idea in Tibet and in Mustang the doesn't there's no direction that I am aware of that is you at least in the Tibetan case you were being the Tibetan king was being taken to heaven where the individual from Samong 5 was going it's not clear where that is but it was the afterlife as simply recorded in a text so not quite sure where that would in

48:46 fact be you know kind of in a geographical sense. Okay, thank you. I still can appears to be frozen. Um so I will jump in for a second with a question. We'll see if we can unfreeze her. Um, all right. So, there's one one question, just a clarifying thing from your images there. It uh it's a it was a little hard to tell whether or not the the uh tombs were built tombs or if they were quarried out of the natural rock. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify that. Those are massive uh rammed earth constructions. So, they were built from the ground up. The tombs were down below. And you know, these things are, you know, the the height of some of the most massive ones are on the order of, you know, 15 m or so. Um, they're they're just big. And so it's all built by human labor of one kind or another. So they're not dug down and they're not, you know, they're they're

49:58 not excavated out of the natural landscape. Okay. So a big undertaking. Okay. Very very interesting. Okay. Um, we have another question. So some interest about the beads. Um, someone's wondering why why would you why do we assume the beads are not do not equate to wealth, I guess. Um, oh, I do agree that they're part of the wealth, but you know, in terms of scale, they're quite different in terms of if you're looking at a golden horse and rider that were intruned with hungsten gauo, that's real wealth. If you're looking at the glass beads, yes, that's good wealth for the individual that's buried in Sam's on five. But on the scale, you know, that was what he and his kin were able to obtain. Just a different scale is really the way to think about it. So yes, it is wealth scale difference. Okay. Very interesting. All right. So I if I there are a lot of comments flying, but people really enjoyed this and some people were

50:52 saying they're they're new new to this topic. Um and wanted to know if you have any recommendations on what uh where one could do some further reading on this topic. Oh, there's a lot of stuff out there. There's a lot of literature. Um, you know, a lot of the textual evidence is really buried in very difficult things to read to be perfectly honest. And I rely on my typologist colleagues to pull that out. But there are some really good histories of Tibet. Um there's a book by Matthew Capstein called the Tibetans which was published back in uh the early as that gives a a nice reconstruction of some of the early parts of the Tibetan Empire period that might be fun to read about. Um there's another book another history by an author named Sam Sam Van Shik that uh wrote a book called Tibeta History which is a little bit more recent. Sadly there's not a whole lot of archaeology that's been written about this in in

51:48 English. Most of this is either in in Chinese or to some extent, you know, Tibetan sources. Um, I will say if you're if you're hanging on by your fingernails, um, I have a book coming out from Cambridge University Press in, you know, not not too distant future that's going to be a a Tibetan, you know, review of Tibetan archaeology. And so that will cover some of this information that I've talked about here. So there are many sources and if anybody wants to email me and with specific questions I'll be happy to answer those as best I can. That's great. Thank you.

52:21 Thank you for offering that. So yeah, if anyone gets in contact us, we will pass it along. Um I have another question. Um specific to the animal sacrifices and whether or not there any dating has been done on the bones. Uh yes, the the ones in Zamzong we know exactly when they were formed. that is that is when they were deposited and it seems to be between about 450 and about 600 uh common era. uh the ones in Sam the material at Dulan is about the same age a little bit later 650 or so common era uh Sam I'm sorry Gampo's tomb well he died sometime around 648 CE so whatever we don't know any more about what what could be dated from that context because there's been no archaeology from that so they're all relatively contemporary within this larger Himalayan Tibetan plateau region so the dating has been fairly clear on both the coffin as well as the animal bones and other other sorts of things found in the tombs

53:24 themselves. Okay. Um well, let's see if we've just got Sally back. I'm going to give Sally a second and throw in one more question and then I'll hand things over to her if it's working out. Um but is there any information available as to how non-elites were buried and could they enjoy an afterlife? Do we know? Good question. And in fact at Samzong we have the we have Samzong five which is the local elite and then on the other tombs you know one through four through 10 those were places where I would say non- elites were buried and in fact when you take a look at the range of materials there um they were buried on wooden beds but not coffins. They're not illustrated. There is utilitarian objects buried with them but there were no gold, no silver, no beads, not much of anything. So, you know, they they clearly had differential access to these things that we're calling wealth objects that Samsung 5 had with him.

54:23 Sally, I see you're back. Have you been able to follow the questions or do you want me to keep going with a few more? I've got I've got a couple up here right now. Sorry about that. My computer just quit on me, so now I'm on my laptop. Okay, we have a nice question about gold. Was the gold from the area where the mass were? Yes. Now, we can't demonstrate that with absolute certainty. Just like I said earlier in archaeology, you know, we have to live with a little bit of uncertainty in our world, but there are very large gold mines that are known from western Tibet in particular. And we can see the shafts of those gold mines that were excavated, you know, back maybe actually back 3,000 years or so.

55:06 So, it's likely that the gold you saw from Sam Dong was fairly local. Where the gold comes from from uh in Songst Gumpo's case, that's less clear. Some of it certainly must have come from Western Tibet, but there's other gold deposits elsewhere in Central Asia that might have contributed to this as well. Okay. What about your tree symbols? Uh John asked uh is there any speculation about the tree symbols on the I love speculation and yes there are uh you know the the fact that we found that tree on the coffin as well as we found it on that golden mass from Kyrgyzstan.

55:45 You know we have interpreted that as what is it is not the same thing as tree of life that you see in central Asia. I want to be really clear on that. But there is other textual evidence from the Tibetan context that talks about junipers and juniper-like trees primarily, you know, junipers and furs that were once part of they they're today venerated as as sacred. Well, in the past, we're believing that that tree motif is representing that same sacrality that was in on that individual's face as well as in the tomb itself on the tomb, you know, coffin itself. So, that's a speculation. We just don't know more than that. But texts say maybe.

56:26 Okay. Nancy asks, "Do any of the texts say what the afterlife would have been like?" Uh, in the case for Samsung 5, we don't have any idea. For Seno, he's going to heaven and heaven is where his ancestors live. And so, he becomes an ancestor that's both living. He's no longer present obviously in in, you know, in Tibet itself. He's above Tibet somewhere and he's living in that afterlife that that can be you can access him by prayer and by ceremony and by ritual, but he's he's elsewhere in terms of where this is. Okay. Well, I don't see any more. But one question I would ask you, that mask with what the treelike symbols on, could it have been um uh a form of face decoration?

57:24 Yes. And again, you know, we're going to turn to text in this particular case as well as archaeology because the the texts from Tibet say very clearly that the golden masks were placed over the faces of individuals as what would be called a support for the soul. And so that mask goes on then after the person is deceased, they put them into the container and then the gold mask goes on. In fact, we can see that going up from western Tibet into Shing Jang as well with these kind of, you know, with this with this, you know, ritual treatment of how these masks were actually used. The little tiny ones that's remember the small one I showed that might have been pinned to a fabric.

58:04 only people that had really wealth or ability to control more wealth would have had the larger ones placed over their faces. So Susan wonders would that have been tattooing, you know, a reflection of tattooing on is what you saw on the masks. Uh I don't know. I don't think so. But it's hard to tell because of course, you know, we have very little, you know, fleshy human remains found at this time frame. Okay. Well, I'm not seeing any more questions coming up, but that was a fascinating lecture, Mark. It's really interesting and um it's the speculation is perhaps the most interesting part because if we don't speculate, we'll never really um come to a sense of what things mean, right? I think that's true. We you know it's really important to keep in mind that you know we like to tell stories but if we're being you know we have to be true as best we can to the empirical data. So on the one hand we need data but on the

59:07 other hand we have to speculate and think think deeply and widely about the way in which we might interpret this from as many sources as we can possibly manage. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. You're welcome. So Meredith, are you still there? That was my next question. I am. I am. And we are right at the hour mark. So I mean I think we I think we can thank everyone for attending. I think there are a few more questions we weren't able to get to, but um you know I think uh we've gotten to a lot of them today. Um, and hopefully people will uh keep keep learning more about this subject.

59:55 So, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Meredith. Thank you, Sally. Thank you all for attending. Thanks for the audience out there as well. You know, I love to talk about Tibet because it's one of those places that we really don't see much and read about in the West. And so, the more we can learn about the people and its culture, the happier that makes me as both an archaeologist as well as a person. Well, good evening, folks. It's late. Yeah. Okay. Good night. Okay. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "AIA Archaeology Hour with Mark Aldenderfer"?

In order: 0:00 Tibetan Plateau, Dr. Mark Alendos, Sally McGrath, University of California (UC); 10:00 Tibetan Plateau, Samzong, Yarlong Valley; 20:00 Tibetan Plateau; 30:00 Yarlong Valley, Samzong, Songstan Gampo, Tibetan Plateau; 40:00 Tibetan Plateau, Loba people, Samzong, Tashilumpo; 50:00 Cambridge University Press, Matthew Capstein, Sam Van Shik, Samzong.

What is mentioned in this ArchaeologyTV episode?

16 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Tibetan Plateau, Samzong, Yarlong Valley, AIA, Sally McGrath, University of New Brunswick. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "AIA Archaeology Hour with Mark Aldenderfer"?

The episode runs 1 h; the transcript is about 10,051 words in 67 timestamped sections.

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