Prehistoric firewood gathering on the northeast Tibetan plateau: environmental and cultural determinism

The history of forager subsistence strategies on the Tibetan plateau during the middle Holocene has been studied extensively, with valuable results from archaeozoology and archaeobotany being produced in recent years. However, changes to the resources collected by the foragers and the factors that influence them have rarely been discussed. Here we examine the differences and factors influencing charcoal identification and analysis results from both hand picking and flotation recovery methods at the Zongri site, revealing more accurately the use of firewood by the foragers and its relationship with climate change and the agricultural population. Our results show that there is a clear deficiency in tree taxa arising from hand picking, perhaps related to the quantity of charcoal collected and identified. The Zongri people mainly used nearby trees and shrubs, including Picea (spruce), Populus (poplar) and Hippophae (sea buckthorn). The material collected was dominated by green (living) wood, which might have been influenced by the farming culture in the adjacent area. The increasing use of Picea may be attributed to the selective collection of wood by the Zongri foragers, and not caused by climate change.

Automated summary

Research at the Zongri site has revealed that the foragers mainly used spruce, poplar, and sea buckthorn from nearby trees and shrubs, with green (living) wood being the dominant material collected. This may have been influenced by the farming culture in the adjacent area, and the increasing use of spruce was likely due to selective wood collection by the Zongri foragers, rather than climate change.