Search

The Kura-Araxes (KA) cultural phenomenon (dated to the Early Bronze Age, c. 3500/3350-2500 BCE) is primarily characterised by the emergence of a homogeneous pottery style and a uniform 'material culture package' in settlements across the South Caucasus, as well as territories extending to the Ancient Near East and the Levant. It has been argued that KA societies practised pastoralism, despite a lack of direct examination of dietary and culinary practices in this region. Here, we report the first analyses of absorbed lipid residues from KA pottery to both determine the organic products produced and consumed and to reconstruct subsistence practices. Our results provide compelling evidence for a diversified diet across KA settlements in Armenia, comprising a mixed economy of meat and plant processing, aquatic fats and dairying. The preservation of diagnostic plant lipid biomarkers, notably long-chain fatty acids (C20 to C28) and n-alkanes (C23 to C33) has enabled the identification of the earliest processing of plants in pottery of the region. These findings suggest that KA settlements were agropastoral exploiting local resources. Results demonstrate the significance of applying biomolecular methods for examining dietary inferences in the South Caucasus region., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2022 Manoukian et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The South Caucasus occupies the divide between ancient Mesopotamia and prehistoric Europe, and was thus crucial in the development of Old World societies. Chronologies for the region, however, have lacked the definition achieved in surrounding areas. Concentrating on the Tsaghkahovit Plain of north-western Armenia, Project ArAGATS s multi-site radiocarbon dataset has now produced Bayesian modelling, which provides tight chronometric support for tracing the transmission of technology, population movement and social developments that shaped the Eurasian Bronze and Iron Ages.Keywords: South Caucasus, Armenia, Bronze Age, Iron Age, chronology, radiocarbon, IntroductionThe Caucasus is one of Eurasia's major archaeological 'fault lines' (Kavtaradze 2004: 539). It is a region where the dynamics of prehistoric Europe and the ancient Near East pressed gainst [...]

Archaeology has recently been described as a means of "bearing witness" through the recuperation of pasts forgotten and dismissed. But archaeology is also a tool for unseeing, creating voids in the historical record easily filled by state-sponsored polemics. In few places is this as clear as the Armenian Highland of eastern Turkey. The year 2020 marked the 105th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, a program of mass murder enacted by the collapsing Ottoman Empire that resulted in the deaths of up to 1.5 million people and the dislocation of almost the entire Armenian population of Anatolia. The genocide continues to define regional politics as a century of denial by the Turkish government strains international relations. Even as an increasingly vocal cadre of historians has grappled with the legacies of collective violence in the region, foreign archaeologists working in Turkey have increasingly avoided the material remains of the Armenian past and the evidence of its erasure, etching genocide denial into the authoritative discourse of the discipline. The disappearance of Armenians from international archaeological accounts of the region effectively co-opts the discipline as a functionary of the Turkish government's historical revisionism. This study combines close readings of works from international archaeology's archive with interviews with foreign archaeologists to better understand the discipline's understudied practices of unseeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Late Bronze Age (ca. 1500-1200 B.C.) in southern Caucasia marked the first appearance of a radically altered regional sociopolitical tradition founded upon newly empowered elites sequestered in fortified citadels. The archaeology of the era indicates a significant break from the preceding Middle Bronze Age, when large burial mounds and a dearth of settlement sites have long suggested the prevalence of pastoral nomadism and mobile sociopolitical institutions. The patterns of social order and institutional formation that developed in the Late Bronze Age appear to have endured well into the Iron Age, exerting a profound impact upon later historical empires, such as Urartu. The investigations of Project ArAGATS are examining the rise of complex societies in Caucasia by detailing the nature of social organization and the apparatus of political authority that constituted this emergent tradition. Having completed an archaeological survey of the Tsakahovit Plain region in 2000, we initiated phase II of our investigations in 2002 with intensive excavations at Tsakahovit and Gegharot fortresses, two settlement sites with well-preserved strata from three major archaeological periods: the Kura-Araxes III phase of the Early Bronze Age, the Late Bronze Age, and the Yervandid period of the mid first millennium B.C. (sixth-third centuries B.C.). The Early Bronze Age settlement at Gegharot is notable not only for its unexpected large size, good preservation, and terraced construction, but also for the illumination it promises to shed on the terminal era of the Kura-Araxes horizon. With the discovery of stratigraphically superimposed Late Bronze Age and Yervandid occupations at Tsakahovit, continuing research at the site promises to shed light on both the initial emergence of sociopolitical complexity in southern Caucasia and the reconfiguration of local practices in the aftermath of the Urartian imperial collapse. *

This article traces the development of archaeological inquiry in the former Soviet Republic of Armenia, from its antiquarian roots in the 19th century, through the Soviet era, and into modern times. The resurgence of Western attention in the region since the end of the Cold War has been driven by collaborative research projects from the United States, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, England, Russia, and Canada, that employ a variety of methods to understand the archaeological heritage of Armenia. Research problems are related to the Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages, as well as to the Urartian, Achaemenid, and Hellenistic periods. For those unfamiliar with Armenia, this article is meant as a primer to the history of the discipline as it has been practiced in the region. For those already engaged in archaeology there, it is our hope that this discussion will lend an added historical dimension to ongoing field projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]