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if future investigations placed it later. As new and trustworthy radiocarbon dates are beginning to accumulate, 2900 BC is emerging as a watershed in the Kura-Araxes tradition, when expansion and diversity become the main themes.
Early Settlements: Houses, Hearths, and Pits
Although coherent house plans are rare for the earliest phase, the domestic sphere was at the core of the Kura-Araxes activities.With interiors that conformed to a clear code of practice, the house had several functions. It was a discrete unit that encompassed household economical tasks, yet at the same time it was replete with symbolism and the focal point of ritual activity. Cereals were stored and food was processed in the house, and judging by the amount of material discard, crafts were also undertaken in close proximity. But the most conspicuous activity was ritual that centred on the hearths, both fixed and portable, which mediated symbolic messages (see following discussion).
Only a handful of sites have yielded traces of the earliest Kura-Araxes structures. The most important is Berikldeebi where an early phase of the KuraAraxes, a poorly preserved deposit (Period IV), was established on the large Late Chalcolithic mud-brick structure. This superimposition is rare and significant, doubly so because we only have one radiocarbon reading for Level IV (3715–3618 cal BC), derived from a charcoal sample and analysed by the Leningrad Laboratory (LE-2197).66 Even so, we need to use this spot date with caution.Although the numerous pits dug during the later Bedeni period (Period III) and more recent foxholes have caused substantial damage to the Period IV settlement, its stratified remains are nonetheless important. The excavators distinguished two building levels (IV1–IV2), which once covered the entire site. Specifically, the key vertical relations of Period IV to the earlier Period V are: (a) the north-east side of Building 1, found superimposed over the mud-brick house of PeriodV; (b) the remains of hearth Nos. 2 and 3 over Pits 151, 240, 241 and 229.
Building 1 was partially preserved, with remnant walls rising no more than 25 cm. Judging by the surviving segment of the structure, it was large and roughly circular in plan (9.5 x 8.5 m). Its wall was built on a framework of posts and plastered on the interior with fine clay, which fragmented and vitrified when the building burnt.The beaten earthen floor was also coated with plaster numerous times. No trace of the roof has survived, but it is likely to have been pitched and lightweight. Upon entry into the building, a visitor would have noticed a fixed hearth (no. 1), embedded into the floor just off-centre. The hearth comprised a basin (ca. 180 cm in diameter) and a plastered, cylindrical pit in its middle, silted up with fine clay. Nearby were the fragments of a low
66 (LE-2197) 4850 ± 50 BP, Kavtaradze 1983: 31; Sagona 2014: 34.
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plastered platform, which showed signs of burning from usage.Arranged along the north-west wall were fragments of ceramic vessels and lids.
Another hearth (no. 2), this time oval-shaped, was fixed into the floor of Building 2, located in the north-east sector of the site. This feature also had associated fragments of portable horseshoe-shaped andirons and ceramic vessels. Five other fixed hearths were found in this area (Square CF). Two are noteworthy. Hearth 3 was found under the remains of a plastered floor in the north-west corner of square CF 56 and had been deliberately sealed over with a layer of dense clay. Hearth 7, on the other hand, was situated in the south-west corner of square CF 03. Its significance lies in the fact that it cut into the north wall of the Late Chalcolithic ‘Shrine’.This important observation, made by Dzhavakhishvili, clearly indicates that the Kura-Araxes building heated by Hearth 7 was erected directly over the remains of the ‘Shrine’, which is pivotal in determining the stratigraphic relationship between Period IV (Kura-Araxes) and the previous PeriodV (Late Chalcolithic).
Grmakhevistavi, the scene of salvage operations near the Armenian border in southern Georgia, had two phases of the formative Kura-Araxes. Rostom Abramishvili and his team exposed some 100 pits, of which only 4 (Pits 15, 29, 47 and 76) were assigned to the earliest Kura-Araxes period; the rest of the pits and 4 tombs were assigned to the later, established Early Bronze Age.67 No coherent architectural plans were discerned, though some of these early pits could be justifiably interpreted as remnants of semi-subterranean dwellings. They were large in size and curved, and contained in situ domestic material, including fragments of horned portable andirons.Abramishvili also carried out rescue excavations at Treli, situated on the outskirts of Tbilisi, but only fugitive traces of the settlement were found: pits, postholes, a floor, and an earthen pit burial.
Early wattle-and-daub architecture can be found at Khizanaant Gora in Shida Kartli.68 Although only partially excavated, Khizanaant Gora provides us with a useful developmental sequence of architecture: nineteen houses were exposed in Levels B–D; no dwellings were delineated in E, the earliest phase. Level D yielded the remains of four freestanding huts with posthole patterns that indicate that they were round, recalling the mud-brick complexes of the Neolithic period.Walking inside one of these Khizanaant houses, one would have been struck by their colour; both the floors and walls were painted red, bringing to mind the practice of ochre-painted interiors from Neolithic Anatolia.69 An outer wall of fence posts enclosed Huts 15, 16 and 19, while Hut 18 was surrounded by a row of stones. The purpose and extent of the outer
67Abramishvili et al. 1980.
68Kikvidze 1972.
69Kikvidze 1972: 94. For Neolithic Anatolia and the use of the colour red, see Sagona and Zimansky 2009: 107–9.
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wall are unclear, though Hut 16 does appear to foreshadow the later development of a main room with an annex.The diameters of the inner rooms range from 2.75 to 3.5 m. Each hut had a round hearth with a clover-leaf-shaped centre set into the middle of the floor.Two rows of posts, probably supporting wickerwork screens that partitioned storage areas, represent the only fixed internal features.
The earliest deposits at Mokhra Blur (levels XI–IX), with its small circular buildings, could well belong to this formative phase, but we must await final publications to be sure.70 Likewise, the round structures exposed during the early campaigns at Kültepe (Nakhichevan) cannot be assigned to this phase with any certainty.71 An exploratory sounding at Sos Höyük, which reached natural gravelly soil, revealed the earliest occupation deposits (Period VA) – a series of burnt floors and large stones associated with a twin-horned portable pot stand and a well-fashioned stone blade displaying extensive use wear.72 A radiocarbon reading of a sample collected at the base of the sounding suggests that the settlement was established in the second half of the 4th millennium BC at the western boundary of this formative period.73
Later Settlements: Diversity in Plan and Construction
Domestic architecture during the rise of the Kura-Araxes is characterised by a number of distinctive traditions. House remains are now more plentiful and are our primary source of information about the built environment.The domestic domain was where Kura-Araxes villagers developed their identity and ideologies. Behind the walls of their homes – built of mud bricks, stone, or posts, these communities shared and negotiated their enduring cultural values.Their houses ranged in plan from single-roomed circular structures (occasionally with an attached rectilinear annex) through freestanding rectangular arrangements to juxtaposed units.And they were built in the plains, on natural bluffs, and on mountain slopes where they were skilfully terraced. Despite these variations, which reflect a combination of ecological factors and diverse regional traditions, the internal organisation of space, the location of activity areas, and the positioning of fixtures such as hearths remained remarkably consistent. This indicates that the social significance of a house was expressed at both a practical and a symbolic level.
Looking at settlements overall, the lack of significant variability in the size of structures suggests local leaders did not express their social status through
70Areshian 2005.
71Kushnareva 1997.
72Sagona and Sagona 2000: 58.
73Calibrated to a 2-sigma accuracy, the reading is Beta-120452: Cal BC 3500–3435, 3385– 3285, and 3245–3105.
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architecture. In fact, in most Kura-Araxes villages it is difficult to identify a house that might have belonged to a village chief or leader.The status of such figures quite likely derived instead from access to resources, or perhaps land and livestock. In the few cases where size differences are evident, the structures could just as easily be explained as community meeting houses, or even shrines. Perhaps Kura-Araxes communities had some form of group leadership, a heterarchical social organisation based on kinship.There is no point in speculating too far, suffice to say that the architecture and its fixtures appear to reflect equality.
Freestanding Wattle-and-Daub Structures
Post-built houses comprise an open framework of load-bearing timber uprights, secured in post-pits, with outer walls constructed of wattle and daubed with clay. It is likely these structures supported a thatched roof, though this has yet to be definitively confirmed.The highest concentration and best examples of wattle-and-daub houses are found in the plains, especially in Shida Kartli, at the villages of Kvatskhelebi, Khizanaant Gora,Tsikhiagora, and Gudabertka.74 Beyond the Caucasus, this type of post construction has been found in eastcentral Anatolia, in the Turkish Upper Euphrates region, most notably at Arslantepe (Period VIB1), Norşuntepe (Levels 23, 20–14), Değirmentepe (Levels III and I), and Taşkun Mevkii (Phase 3).75 Post frameworks have also been detected at Godin Tepe, where the earliest phase (IV2) revealed remnants of small structures.76
The settlement of Kvatskhelebi was completely excavated and affords the clearest plan of any village of the post construction type. Covering an area of approximately 60 x 50 m, the hamlet comprised detached houses arranged in close proximity to each other (Figure 5.3).An earlier settlement (Level C) had twenty-five buildings grouped into three main blocks separated by alleyways with a north–east to south–west orientation. Twenty-two houses were built with wattle-and-daub; three had walls of mud-brick. Around 2400/2300 BC, the village burned and was only partially re-built (Level B).
House plans at Kvatskhelebi were uniform: a square main room with rounded corners and an attached rectangular vestibule. Access to the house was through the porch, which had a doorway in either its main or its side wall. These annexes and several large jars half buried in the soil adequately met storage needs. Most houses had a stone or clay step on the outside of the
74 Dzhavakhishvili and Glonti 1962 (Kvatskhelebi); Kikvidze 1972 (Khizanaant Gora); Makharadze 1994 (Tsikhiagora); Mindiashvili et al. 2012 (Gudabertka).
75 Arslantepe (Frangipane 2000: 448); Norşuntepe (Hauptmann 2000: 428, table 1); Değirmentepe (Duru 1979: 70, 72; pls 69, 71);Taşkun Mevkii (Sagona 1994a: 5–6).
76 Rothman 2011: 160.
Figure 5.3. Kvatskhelebi: (1) Level B;(2–4) reconstructions of a standard Kvatskhelebi house; (5–6) Level C with enlargement of tomb area; (drawn by C. Sagona after Glonti et al. 2008).
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threshold. Individual houses had between 25 and 40 m2 |
of floor space, about |
a quarter of which was used for storage.The interior walls were coated with clay. Wall fragments from a wattle-and-daub building at Gudabertka yielded traces of wall paintings executed in fugitive red and black paint.77 Floors at Kvatskhelebi were lime-plastered and often concealed a layer of river pebbles that were embedded into the earth. Most of the dwellings had wattle-and-daub structures supported on a wooden post framework driven into the ground and secured by stones; the thickness of the walls ranged between 30 and 40 cm. Dzhavakhishvili believes the roofs were fl at, but taking into account the considerable amount of rain this region receives, it is quite likely that they were sloping gabled roofs, similar to those of the house models from south-eastern Europe.78 Even so, a clay model affords some understanding of the walls (Figure 5.4(2)). An upright probably supported a matted roof. The village at Gudabertka comprised several of these post-houses, surrounded by a thick mud-brick wall, possibly a boundary wall.79
Standardisation is also apparent in the internal layout of Kura-Araxes households. As a rule, a circular clay hearth with a clover-leaf-shaped centre and upward projections was built into the floor in the middle of the main room. Houses from Kvatskhelebi Level C1 had a second, similar hearth placed in a corner of the room. Each main chamber was also fitted with a bench against the back wall.The forecourts, too, were generally furnished with benches for storage: either two set opposite each other along the front and back walls, or four with one placed on each wall. The constraints of space probably meant that deployment of household goods and the social organisation and activities within these houses were well defined.Accordingly, household possessions were generally arranged on the bench along the wall, not far from the hearth and kitchen utensils. House 1, in Level C1, did not conform to the standard plan, and the excavators suggest its purpose was ritual (see following discussion).A similar attribution was made for the oval room at Gudabertka.
East of Kvatskhelebi is Tsikhiagora, where two significant layers were exposed in the lowest cultural deposit (Level I).80 The uppermost, Layer A, with two building horizons, attested to the co-existence of the Kura-Araxes and Bedeni traditions (addressed in Chapter 7); a thin deposit of sterile soil separates it from Layer B, incorporating building horizons 1 to 3, from top to bottom, which measured 60 cm in depth. Level B2, which ended in a violent fire, is the best preserved. Many of the architectural features noted at Kvatskhelebi can also be seen at Tsikhiagora – a broad rectangular central
77Munchaev 1994a: 33; Mindiashvili et al. 2012.
78Dzhavakhishvili 1973: 113–30, fig. 13. Post-houses were the norm in the European Bronze Age, see Brück and Fokkens 2013.
79Mindiashvili et al. 2012.
80Makharadze 1994.
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Figure 5.4. Chobareti, Structure 4 and clay model of a house from Kvatskhelebi Level C (created by M. Hutson, C. Ogleby and C. Sagona; photographs A. Sagona).