From_the_Late_Upper_Palaeolithic_to_the

this culture are found in altitude and several are caves or rock shelters; all have produced only one level of occupation, and none has been dated by 14C.

Provenance of the obsidian. The study of the provenance of the obsidian used at Kmlo-2 has not enabled the establishment of a link with the Chikiani deposit. In fact, analysis of some thirty artefacts from this site, including 20 Kmlo tools, has shown that the sources of supply were diversified (Fig. 13):

ŒGutansar, which lies at a distance requiring about 7 hours of walking, or 1 day;

ŒTsaghkunyats, at the same distance; but several pieces found at Kmlo-2 have a cortical surface, indicating that original blocks were river cobbles; therefore, they were probably collected in the Kasakh River, which carries many obsidian blocks from its upper course along the Tsaghkunyats range;

ŒArteni, which lies at about 16 hours’ walk from Kmlo-2, that is 2 to 3 days;

ŒOne sample came from the region of Kars (Sarighamish) and was probably sampled in the secondary deposits accumulated by the Kars river at its confluent with the Akhurian;

ŒA last sample came from Geghasar, south-west of Lake Sevan.

In any case, the obsidian is exclusively of local origin; there is no material imported from the Lake Van region, near Çayönü, nor from Chikiani in Georgia.

Conclusions

The prehistoric cultures that developed on Armenian territory, between the Last Glacial Maximum (20,00018,000 BP) and the settlement in the Ararat plain about 7000 BP (or 6000 cal BC) of Neolithic populations that had mastered agriculture and herding (“Aratashen culture”), remain very poorly known. The sites of Kalavan-1 and Kmlo-2 shed some light on this period.

The camp at Kalavan-1, established in the mountains overlooking the north shore of Lake Sevan, provides evidence for the reoccupation by humans of the middle altitude regions (about 1600 m) at the end of the warm phase succeeding the Last Glacial Maximum (15,000-14,000 BC). It demonstrates that these populations were familiar with the migration circuits of wild Caprinae, as well as the location of obsidian sources around Lake Sevan. The technical methods used for knapping and for the transformation of blanks into tools, in particular the many backed pieces and backed points, are typical of the Epigravettian tradition. They relate Kalavan-1 to the Epigravettian culture, known thus far to stretch towards the east to Dniepr basin and Don basin, to western Georgia (Dzudzuana) and south-western Turkey (Öküzini).

The site of Kmlo-2 is evidence for the presence of human groups at the beginning of the Holocene in the region of the Aragats massif. With a cave occupation and a tool kit of microlithic tradition, the culture represented at Kmlo-2 is related to the Mesolithic. But a particular category of artefacts (the “Kmlo tools”), with abrupt, very regular pressure retouch, is reminiscent of both the “Çayönü tools”, present in northern Mesopotamia between the 8th and the 6th millennia BC, and the “hook-like tools” of the Paluri-Nagutny culture which developed on the south-west flank of the Greater Caucasus and then on the high plateaus of southern Georgia in an adjoining period. The relations that existed between Kmlo-2 and these cultures will be the subject of a thorough study.

Moreover, research should especially be continued in order to bring to light the sites of the beginning of the Holocene, which will enable a better understanding of human occupation of Armenia in this period, as well as the origin, for this region, of the domestication process of the flora and the fauna.

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