Contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of Illustrations -- Chapter 1 Introduction -- The Starting Point -- Borrowing the Term "Archaeology" -- Books Written in Tibetan -- Statistics in Book History -- My Fieldwork, Sources, and Experiments -- Chapter 2 Methods: An Uneasy Alliance of Science and History -- Many Typologies of Book Features -- Tools to Read What is Not Written -- Survey of Disciplines Used for Dating -- Study of Paper in Books -- Chapter 3 Tibetan Books: A Craft and Artistry -- Chapter 4 Indigo, Gold, and Human Blood: Tibetan Illuminated Manuscripts -- Manuscripts versus Prints -- Patronage and Ownership -- Gold Manuscripts -- Format and Book Binding Style -- Illuminations and Decorations -- Calligraphy -- Page Layout -- Ink -- Writing Tools -- Paper -- Chapter 5 Tibetan Woodblock Printing Culture -- Origin of New Technology and the Early Tibetan Woodblock Prints -- Production of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon -- Edition, Re-edition, and Reprint: The Technical Identity of Hundred-Volume Sets -- Early Editions of Tibetan Kanjur Produced in Beijing -- Mongolian Kanjurs -- Tibetan Kanjurs Produced in Tibet and Tibetan Borderland -- Patterns of Physical Features in Selected Editions of Tibetan Kanjur in a Regional and Temporal Perspective -- Chapter 6 A Survey of Tibetan Paper -- History of Paper in Central Asia and Tibet -- Himalayan Papermaking Plants and the Localization of Tibetan Paper and Book Origins -- Papermaking Methods in Tibet Traceable in Books -- Papermaking Tools and Technology -- Chapter 7 Conservation -- Typical Damage to Tibetan Books -- Selected Procedures of Conservation Treatment -- Appendix 1 Selected Items from the Tibetan Collections of the British Library -- Appendix 2 Features of Paper in Selected Sets of Tibetan Kanjur -- Appendix 3 Transcription of the Yongle Covers Inscriptions.

Appendix 4 Selected Items from the Tibetan Collection from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preußischer Kulturbesitz (the Berlin State Library), Orientabteilung -- Appendix 5 Selected Items from the Tibetan Collection of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC: The Asian Reading Room -- Bibliography -- Index.