Khashuri Natsargora: The Early Bronze Age Graves. Publications of the Georgian-Italian Shida Kartli Archaeological Project, Vols. I & II
This grant, awarded to Dr. Elena Rova, supports the publication of the final reports about the Georgian excavations at the Early Bronze Age settlement and cemetery of Khashuri Nastargora in the Shida Kartli region of Georgia. Excavations at the site, which lies 7km to the N of the Kura River valley at 42°04’13” N and 43°42’54” E, were carried out between 1984 and 1992 by the late Alexander Ramishvili of the Khashuri Archaeological Expedition, but the EBA levels and graves had been the subject only of very preliminary reports by the excavator. The importance of Natsargora lies in the fact that it is one of the few sites of the Southern Caucasus which yielded both Kura-Araxes and Early Kurgan (Bedeni) material, and where the latter has been discovered in a settlement and not in a cemetery context. Work on the Natsargora documentation by the joint “Shida Kartli project” of the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the Georgian National Museum headed by Prof. Marina Puturidze, Dr. Zurab Macharadze and Prof. Elena Rova started in September 2009 with a first campaign in Georgia, during which the original excavation documentation was digitalized and the translated into English, and the cemetery material was analyzed, and continued during the following season 2010, when the material from the settlement (campaigns 1984-1986) was analysed.
The re-evaluation of the documentation shed new light on the debated and still poorly understood relation between the Kura-Araxes and Bedeni cultures. Contrary to previous hypotheses, the Kura-Araxes level of Natsargora belongs to the Kura-Araxes II phase (31-30th centuries BC). Kura-Araxes occupation was probably of rather short duration, and resulted in a ca 50 cm thick anthropic accumulation, characterised by rather ephemeral and frequently re-built structures of domestic type, and by open areas, mainly devoted to cereal processing. The settlement occupied the whole top of the mound, and extended as well over the flat area to the southwest it; its cemetery was located beyond the latter.
The abandonement of the Kura-Araxes village was most probably followed by a period of virtual abandonment, corresponding to the KA III and Martqopi (?) periods, and by a re-occupation of limited extension during the Bedeni period. The Bedeni presence appears to have mainly consisted of pits cutting the Kura-Araxes layers, some of which contained a compacted mass of pottery sherds and almost entire vessels, apparently related to the preparation and consumption of food and beverages. This may suggest that the pits did not contain generic domestic refuse, but rather the leftovers of occasional convivial ceremonies, possibly connected with cultic activities. There followed, at the end of the Early Bronze Age, a longer period of abandonment of the site, which resulted into the sealing of the EBA layers by an up to 50 cm layer of sterile soil, before the establishing there, at the beginning of the LBA, of a new sedentary village.
The first volume of the joint publication, devoted to a general presentation of the site and to the study of the EBA cemetery, appeared in 2012 in the Subartu series (Brepols Publishers). The second volume, which will include the Natsargora settlement publication and the archaeobotanical, palaeozoological and archaeometric reports and will appear in the same series, is still in preparation.
