environs of Yerevan where he excavated the mound sites of Mukhannat Tappa (1935–1936) and Shengavit (1936–1938). The latter, in particular, boded well for providing a stratified sequence of the Kura-Araxes culture, but Baiburtian’s thoughts were never published, owing to his untimely death.30

Although this period witnessed a sad loss of talent, the vagaries of the time also saw the Caucasus gain one of its most gifted archaeologists – Boris Alekseyevich Kuftin. A botanist by training, acquiring knowledge of anthropology and archaeology along the way, Kuftin rose in rank at Moscow State University and GAIMK. But, like so many intellectuals, he and his colleagues were targeted by Stalin’s purge,forcing Kuftin into self-imposed exile inVologda. A combination of timing and good fortune saw Kuftin invited to work at the National Museum, Tbilisi (rather than face exile in Siberia). From there he went on to make one of the most enduring contributions to the archaeology of the Caucasus. He not only excavated the spectacular Trialeti kurgans ahead of the construction of the Tsalka dam, but using a culture-historical approach he defined a number of archaeological cultures and produced a coherent regional periodisation for the southern Caucasus.31 His articulation of the Kura-Araxes horizon and Trialeti assemblages, in particular, formed the basis of subsequent investigations in the late prehistory of the region. It was also during the late 1930s that Soviet archaeologists became captivated with the archaeology of the outlying regions of their Union, the Caucasus amongst them. In addition to Kuftin’s work, investigations at the Urartian fortress at Karmir Blur by Boris Piotrovskii presented researchers with a cultural diversity that was difficult to accommodate into the ‘theory of stages’.32

Post–World War II

The great and threatening stress that the various peoples of the USSR faced leading up to World War II and in the ensuing decades was expressed in a surge of studies that resulted ‘in a growth of national self-consciousness, the expression of national pride and the fostering of the best indigenous traditions’.33 In archaeology, these sentiments were expressed through ethnogenesis – the view that societies can be understood as ethnically distinct in the surrounding cultural landscape through time.34 This approach suited a multi-ethnic Soviet Union and led to nation-building narratives, which traced peoples’ origins back into prehistory. Concepts such as ethnicity, migration, and continuity were back on the agenda, and Marr’s ‘theory of stages’ was pushed into the background until it was finally rejected in

30Some of Baiburtyan’s detailed ideas have only been published recently (2011); see also Areshian 2005.

31Kuftin 1940, 1941, 1944a, 1944b, 1948, 1949, 1950.

32Piotrovskii 1950, 1952, 1955.

33Bulkin et al. 1982: 276.

34Weik 2014.

1950. Ancient material culture suddenly had a direct link to contemporary communities because it was seen as a tangible expression of the productive activities of ancestral societies.

By the late 1950s, new forces began to shape archaeological theory and fieldwork.With the growth of infrastructure projects throughout the USSR, archaeologists persuaded the state to introduce what we now call rescue (or salvage) archaeology, by requiring construction companies to fund excavations of archaeological sites threatened by building activities.35 This commendable desire to preserve and manage cultural assets through law (Cultural Resource Management) was well ahead of comparable developments in theWest, where it grew from the conservation and environmental movements of the late 1960s and 1970s.36

Expeditions throughout the Soviet Union ballooned in the 1960s and 1970s to in excess of 500 expeditions a year, with a commensurate publication output of around 3,000 studies a year. In the southern Caucasus, a number of fundamentally important sites were investigated: Kvatskhelebi and Shualveris Gora in Georgia, Kültepe and Shomutepe in Azerbaijan, and Artik and Mestamor in Armenia, to mention but a few.37 The northern Caucasus was just as active, where researchers such as Evgenii Ignatevich Krupnov, who won the Lenin Prize in 1963, andVladimir Ivanovich Markovin spearheaded attempts to make sense of the region’s ancient past.38

As research standards improved across all disciplines in the 1960s, so too did self-evaluation. Scientific objectivity gradually began to replace the subjectivity that had fuelled the ethnogenetic paradigm.Yet science-based studies remained compartmentalised. Rarely were they dovetailed with material culture into persuasive accounts of cultural change. Even so, major themes arose and became increasingly apparent during this period, including the earliest agricultural settlements (the so-called Shulaveri-Shomutepe culture), copper and bronze metallurgy, and the distinctiveness of the western Caucasus.

‘Swings and Roundabouts’

The period of détente in the 1970s broadened intellectual perspectives. Intensive debates, especially between those who adhered to historical materialism and those who saw value in the emerging field of sociology, resulted in a more sophisticated theoretical framework that was not averse to embracing

35In the 1980s,a new journal devoted to salvage archaeology was founded,Arkheologicheskie Otkrytiia Na Novostroykakh. I would like to thank Giorgi Bedianashvili for drawing my attention to this publication.

36King 2008.

37Dzhavakhishvili and Glonti 1962 (Kvatskhelebi); Dzhaparidze and Dzhavakhishvili 1971 (Shulaveris Gora); Abibullaev 1959a (Kiul’tepe); Narimanov 1965 (Shomutepe); Khachatrian 1979 (Artik); Khanzadian 1995 (Metsamor).

38See for example, Krupnov’s (1960) synthesis on the northern Caucasus, and Markovin’s (1978) seminal study of the dolmens.

views expressed in the West. In the decade before the collapse of the Soviet Union, archaeology had differentiated itself into a number of categories that have been divided into two groups. One group continued to pursue established traditions, whereas the other sought new approaches.39

Those who harked back to one of the earliest phases of Soviet archaeology firmly believed that archaeology came under the umbrella of history. Narrative histories such as the multi-volume Archaeology of the USSR provided a broad, yet quite detailed sweep of regional surveys. Historical methods, it was argued, were appropriate for the interpretation of archaeological artefacts.This perspective welcomed criticisms that studies were impressionistic, a view reinforced by a lack of engagement with archaeological science, including radiocarbon analysis.Within this cohort of traditional archaeologists were those who very deliberately addressed the question of origins through the identification of ‘ethnic indicators’ that linked past and present communities. This proposition of ‘ethnogenesis’ was applied most vociferously to the origins of the Scythians and Slavs, though it also found favour in the southern Caucasus.40 Conceptually, it essentially assumes that the development of human behaviour has been somehow fossilised, enabling ethnic indicators to be transmitted over the millennia.

Soviet ethnographers were the harshest critics of this approach and their research all but debunked the paradigm, which nevertheless continues in some quarters today.41 At the same time, their work intensified the debate over whether ethnicity is retrievable from archaeological cultures.To this traditional group have been added those studies that attempt to explain the complex societies of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Championed by V. M. Masson, researchers readily accepted the approaches defined by Western archaeologists such as Vere Gordon Childe, Robert Braidwood, and Robert McAdams. Influenced by neo-evolutionism and the early applications of ‘new archaeology’, especially systems theory, these archaeologists were most interested in explaining socio-political processes and structures.42

Counterbalancing this traditional (normative) trend were a range of studies that started to reflect advances in the Anglo-American schools. The objective and analytical approach to material culture championed by David Clarke struck a chord with some, though others found it too narrow and formalist with little bearing on human behaviour.43 Others found solace in materials analysis. Following the lead of S. A. Semenov and E. N. Chernykh, these

39Bulkin et al. 1982.

40On the Slavs,see Artamonov 1971,and for theTrans-Caucasus there is Dzhaparidze 1976.

41For an incisive analysis of the way ethnogenesis has led to modern national myths of origin, see Shnirelman 2001.Another critical review is Kohl 2012.

42For the flip side, namely Marxism in Western archaeology, see, McGuire 1993;Trigger 1993.

43Clarke 1968; Bulkin et al. 1982: 228.

of semi-autonomous archaeological expeditions that characterised archaeology in the Soviet Union has given way to a centralised system. In many cases, these structural reforms have been accompanied by legal reforms in the field of cultural heritage and new museum policies. Modern management schemes and contemporary administration systems focus on public education and the coordination of academic and museum activities.

Several themes have emerged in post-perestroika collaborative research. First, there are new field methodologies and trajectories. Non-invasive surface inspection, especially intensive field surveying, which has a long history in Western archaeology, was not embraced, or indeed encouraged, as a worthwhile pursuit in the Soviet era. Accordingly, early gazetteers of sites mostly comprise a listing of excavated sites, passing references to nearby sites, or chance finds gleaned from preliminary reports, rather than data derived from any systematic ground search. Modern surveys, however, such as the one that initiated project ArAGATS, combine systematic field walking with evidence derived from remote sensing to determine the spatial dimensions of human activities.47 These and other forms of evidence are generally managed in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), digital databases, and mapping software that enable information to be layered and interrelated. Salvage archaeology, on the other hand, now very much driven by government agencies, continues its strong tradition.The construction of various gas and oil pipelines such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan installation, are adding much information to the normal research-based project.48

Field practices and analytical procedures have tightened considerably and now employ state of the art techniques that archaeological sciences have to offer. At the most basic level, a trustworthy chronological backbone of the region is starting to take shape.With the ready availability of radiocarbon analysis, calibrated readings taken from short-lived samples will eventually replace artefact typology as the mode through which to construct a chronology.49 Palaeolithic and Mesolithic levels at key sites on both sides of the Caucasus now boast literally hundreds of chronometric dates. We can expect similar robust suites of dates for other periods, but at the moment the coverage is very patchy. Finally, fieldwork is being conducted that is framed within appropriate theoretical constructs aimed at addressing more precisely the nature of past human behaviour, and social and cultural change.

47Smith et al. 2009.

48For example, Gamkrelidze 2010.

49See Chernykh 2011 as an example of how suites of radiocarbon dates have completely transformed our understanding of cultural developments in Eurasia. On issues pertaining to early radiocarbon analyses see, Bronk Ramsey 2008; Manning and Kromer 2011; Shortland and Bronk Ramsey 2013.