Malgré l’appel publié en 1978 par Giuseppe Tucci, le célèbre tibétologue italien, à destination de la communauté des archéologues et par lequel il les invitait à explorer l’Himalaya dans le sillon des alpinistes pour y découvrir des cultures originales et mieux comprendre la diffusion du Bouddhisme en Asie cette région de haute-montagne demeura l’objet de peu de travaux archéologiques jusqu’au milieu des années 2000. C’est en 2020 seulement qu’une équipe de recherche dédiée à l’archéologie himalayenne fut créée grâce à l’obtention d’un financement pluriannuel.
Copyright: Abram Pointet / Martin Vernier 2019
Despite the appeal published in 1978 by Giuseppe Tucci, the famous Italian Tibetologist, inviting the archaeological community to explore the Himalayas in the footsteps of mountaineers in order to discover original cultures and gain a better understanding of the spread of Buddhism in Asia, little archaeological work was carried out in this high-mountain region until the mid-2000s. It was only in 2020 that a research team dedicated to Himalayan archaeology was created, thanks to multi-year funding.
For the first time at international level, a research team is dedicated to the archaeology of the Himalayas, along the lines of existing teams for other regions of the world, such as the archaeology of the Americas or Central Asia.
The vision of the Himalayas as a barrier needs to be deconstructed because, contrary to popular belief, their geographical position makes them a crossroads. As a result, the Himalayas are an ideal place to study the long-term cultural interactions between the Indian, Central Asian and Tibetan worlds.
The Himalayas were also home to ancient local cultures about which we still know almost nothing: archaeological research there only began in the 1990s. After the initial work carried out by individual researchers, three archaeological missions have been conducting extensive surveys and excavations over the last ten years in Ladakh (Franco-Indian mission), Kinnaur (Indian mission) and Mustang (American-Nepalese mission). The directors of these missions have recently initiated a dialogue. The international project to document petroglyphs and rock inscriptions in northern Pakistan is also associated with this initiative.
This team, made up of around ten international researchers, is exploring two research themes using an overall methodology that will involve analysing the material culture and networks of the past based on a selection of archaeological sites. The first theme deals with the long-term settlement of the Himalayas and the second with the establishment and development of Buddhism in the region up to the beginning of the 2nd millennium AD.
The funding obtained for this project has enabled the creation of research contracts, thus providing a favourable framework for a new generation of scientists (doctoral and post-doctoral students) who are already involved in the emerging field of Himalayan archaeology.
