Citation:
Abstract:
The Kura-Araxes cultural tradition and its related societal structures originated at about 3500 BC and lasted until 2500 BC. Although archaeologists recognized its typical artifacts, which included a package of pottery style, housing, and ritual, more than 100 years ago, little was known outside its homeland region. This was in large part because that homeland lay behind the Iron Curtain, and such material that was published was in local languages that few outside it did not usually read, and local journals that were often unavailable internationally. Interest in the West arose initially through areas outside of the South Caucasus. This is because, starting at about 3200 BC, small groups of migrants carrying the Kura-Araxes cultural package began to settle toward the west in the Taurus Mountains and by 2850 BC into the Levant. Somewhat later migrants began to spread eastward into the highlands of the Zagros Mountains. Research on these migrant communities therefore began before the fall of the Iron Curtain in Turkey, Iran, and the Levant (the Amuq of Turkey, north Syria, Israel, and Jordan). After the independence of South Caucasian states, cooperation of South-Caucasian, West Europeans, and Americans increased dramatically. This book represents one such collaboration of Armenian and American colleagues.
The broader importance of the Kura-Araxes lies in part in its difference from neighboring cultures. The Kura-Araxes is parallel in time to the origin of cities and states in the alluvial plains of Mesopotamia to its south (the LC3-5/Uruk and Early Dynastic I/II). Unlike its neighbor to the south, the Kura-Araxes's homeland lies in the mountainous environments of the South Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan). Although there were significant intercultural connections with Northern Mesopotamia in the LC2, represented in part by Chaff-Faced Wares, a cultural barrier appeared to cut the mountains off from the Mesopotamian Jazira for the next millennium. The first five hundred years of the Kura-Araxes (KA1) were typified by small, egalitarian societies of farmer-herders with homogeneous cultural traditions, represented in its pottery styles and other cultural aspects. The second 500 years (KA2) saw some Balkanization in cultural traditions and some kinds of increases in societal complexity, though not at all as complex as the state-level societies to its south. Therefore the nature and evolutionary trajectory of the Kura-Araxes cultural tradition and societal structures present interesting cases for study and for comparison.
Some of the changes of the KA2 include an increase in population, sophistication of craft technology, and integration of smaller polities with centers of increased size, although still small by Mesopotamian contemporaneous standards. The site of Shengavit, located in the city of Yerevan on a high bluff over the Hrazdan River (now dammed to create Lake Yerevan), represents one of these small centers at 6 hectares. The site was excavated from the 1930's to the 1980's and 2000-2008. Many artifacts are housed in the National History Museum, the Erebuni Museum, and the Yerevan Museum. Yet little real detail was published on the site and its artifacts. Less yet was probed about the political and economic organization, interactions, and ideological features these artifacts represented. So, in 2009 Rothman joined Simonyan with the idea to make these artifacts and their interpretations available to a wider audience. They began with three excavation seasons using modern techniques to clarify some issues. They brought together a set of talented experts from Armenia and America. This volume represents descriptions and analyses of the architecture, natural environment, archaeobotany, archaeozoology, metallurgy, lithics, pottery, ground stone and bone tools, rituals, mortuary practices, symbols, and personal adornments of an ancient people in a mountainous corner of the Middle East. What sort of picture can we paint from the still preliminary patterns and colors these artifacts provide?
The publication project was directed by Dr. Mitchell Rothman.