Wandering the highlands and valleys: Social and economic practices between the Late Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age in the Transcaucasus

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Stöllner
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 424795509

South-west Asia is marked during the Late Chalcolithic period by a progressive shift in its centre of gravity: some time ca. the 5th- 4th millennia BC, the dynamics of economic change appear to move from the Fertile Crescent, where many innovations relating to subsistence strategies and the production of material goods had developed during the Neolithic, to the Caucasian orbit. There was a rise of technical advances in the Caucasus itself, such as mining (copper, obsidian) or extractive metallurgy but also a change in pottery production: The Southern Caucasus became a major source of attraction for human groups living in Iran, Mesopotamia and beyond; hence developing into an important component in the dynamics that progressively shaped SW Asia at the dawn of urban civilization (Uruk-complex). It is thus probably no coincidence that the Caucasian cultural landscape, especially its southern component, is marked by the complexity of its settlement pattern and ritual pattern during that time. Research recently carried out by the ANR-DFG-project “Mines” has shown that several communities belonging to distinct cultural backgrounds, and including Pre-Kura-Araxes groups, were actually coexisting in the Araxes and Kura basin by the late 5th millennium BC and the beginning of the 4th millenium. Some of these groups had mastered elaborate pyrotechniques, such as metallurgy, while favouring specific biotopes by settling on the Lesser Caucasus mountain slopes. The progressive occupation of the mountainous hinterland that borders the large and fertile Kura and Araxes valleys certainly marks a new development in land exploration, which could result from complex dynamics, combining the rise of long-distance pastoralism, new economic networks and the search for metal ores. Economic re-organisation and the production of new goods may in return have been the force that propelled Kura- Araxes groups towards eastern Anatolia and south-western Iran at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age. Our first goal is to characterize and evaluate the human diversity perceptible throughout the 4th millennium BC in the south Caucasus in terms of technological know-how, subsistence strategies, the genetic pool, and human dietary scope. Our second aim is to characterize and assess change between the 5th and mid-3rd millennium BC. Technological innovation in the Caucasus in areas such as mining, extractive metallurgy, but also probably in the emergence of woolen fabrics and dairy products, were coeval with rising mobility, multi-culturalism, and incipient social inequalities. This study will aim at integrating the data pertaining to these many different fields, in order to unravel the possible scenarios that turned the Caucasus from a Neolithic cultural backwater into a Late Chalcolithic economic hotspot, before it withdrew into itself at the beginning of the 3rd millennium for reasons that are still unknown.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Georgia
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Irina Gambaschidze