Streaming lecture. Mark Aldenderfer (Archaeological Institute of America). Although historians and Tibetologists since the early 20th C have collected and interpreted religious documents describing in general terms rituals of death and safe passage to the afterlife among the early peoples of the Himalayas, the archaeological record offered little insight into them. But recent research by archaeologists across the region have made extraordinary discoveries that both challenge and corroborate current understandings as well as identifying previously unknown traditions for both commoners and kings.