PUBLISHED 2023. Please visit the publication's webpage.
At the same time as southern Mesopotamians were creating the first cities and the first state-level societies, a very different cultural tradition and societal structure began in the mountains of the South Caucasus. This cultural tradition and society is called Kura-Araxes after the two rivers that run through its homeland. Other names for it are Early Transcaucasian, Shengavitian, Karaz, Pulur, and Khirbet Kerak. This cultural tradition represents a package of cultural symbols: a distinctive handmade black burnished pottery, household layout, and religious ritual and symbols of the hearth. The importance of this package and the various names is that from 3300-2800 BCE, migrants from this cultural tradition spread south into the Lake Van area, north along the Caspian Coast, southeast in the Zagros, west into the Taurus, and down into the Levant. The landscape of the Kura-Araxes covers as great an area as early empires. Yet, as far as we know, this was a society of small-scale agro-pastoral settlers with no signs of authoritarian rule or social differentiation. It lasted from 3500 to 2500 BCE. From its first stage, the KA1 (3500-3000) to its second, KA2 (3000-2500 BCE) cultural and societal change is evident, but never at the level of the Mesopotamian Uruk or Early Dynastic societies. One of the most famous and extensively excavated sites of the homeland is Shengavit, a mound in the heart of the capital of Armenia, Yerevan. No modern publication has ever been written about the site despite work on it from 1936 to the current day. This project is intended to accomplish that end, starting with three seasons of excavation to clarify the stratigraphy and apply modern analytic techniques. Aside from two printed volumes, one in English and one in Armenian, this project will create a web archive with much more extensive data than any printed book would provide.
The publication project is directed by Dr. Mitchell S. Rothman in cooperation with Dr. Hakob Yervand Simonyan. Dr. Simonyan is one of the deans of Armenian Archaeology, having won the Armenian metal for lifetime achievement in recent years. He has broad experience in Armenian archaeology at sites like Nerkin and Verin Naver, Karmir Blur, Aghdzq, Agarak, Shengavit, etc. He edited the Hrazhdan journal. He has written 230 articles on aspects of the Armenian past from the Bronze Age to the early kings of Armenia. He is a professor of Art History at the Yerevan State University, but most of his time when not doing archaeology he spent to administer the Department of Archeology of the Scientific Research Center for Historical & Cultural Heritage, Republic of Armenia.
