Conclusions

male, whose knees were originally pulled up.Another type of north Caucasian wooden chamber is a wood-lined pit. Examples of this type have been found at Kyzburun III Barrow 3, Chorocholi Barrow 22, and Tli Grave 244, amongst other sites.190

CONCLUSIONS

The millennium or so that we have just reviewed represented a period of great social change. Elaborately furnished burials, many containing novel technological items, reflected the formation of ranked societies.A fully sedentary lifestyle gave way to one that embraced mobility to a much larger extent, though villagers continued to till the land and practise a diverse horticulture. Situated on the fringe of the emerging city-states of Syro-Mesopotamia, Caucasian communities played an important role in stimulating the inter-regional flow of luxury items.

Although the Caucasus did not engender the trappings of centralised bureaucracy – there were no monumental buildings or systems of accountability – the region nonetheless developed its own expression of power and authority. Monumentality and ritual were essential elements of the cultural rhetoric of the Caucasus, too, but the focal points were barrows and burials, not buildings.The family of the deceased would reinforce its social bearing with the construction of conspicuous and showy tumuli that entombed important persons and their wealth. It seems that in the late prehistoric Caucasus, success was measured by the quantities of desirable materials and objects available for the family’s disposal.Wheeled vehicles and metalwork were high on their wish lists, and were elevated to symbols of power and wealth.The funerary assemblage could be quite extensive, also including more common goods such as ceramics and stone objects, but it appears that items reflecting the latest technology, such as wagons and carts, or manufactured from rare substances, such as gold, were accorded the greatest value.

The Caucasus was not simply a consumer of luxury items, but also a hub of innovative and sophisticated metallurgy. Craftsmen were in demand by leaders of communities whose control of restricted resources such as tin gained them power and prestige.191 Parallels between material items found in these barrow cultures and the lands of the Near East and Aegean point to far-flung connections.What emerges from this mix of influences is hybridity.The Martkopi funerary assemblage, for instance, displays clear Kura-Araxes antecedents grafted onto elements derived from the north Caucasus. The shaft-hole axes resemble the elongated examples from Sachkhere, but are larger.

190Bertram 2003: 97–8.

191Abramishvili 2010: 169.

CHAPTER 8

FROM FORTRESSES TO FRAGMENTATION : THE SOUTHERN CAUCASUS IN THE LATE BRONZE AGE THROUGH THE IRON AGE I (150 0 – 8 0 0 BC)

THE CAUCASUS FROM 1500 TO 800 BC

Unlike the Near East and Mediterranean regions, where great social and political upheavals marked the transition between the end of the Late Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, around 1,100 BC, in the Caucasus this interlude is seamless.1 Instead, the rupture in cultural traditions occurred around the middle of the second millennium BC – the shift between the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze Ages – when a number of significant changes were witnessed.

The middle stretch of the second millennium BC, beginning about 1,500 BC, ushered in a dramatically different period, distinguished by innovations in metallurgy and a huge increase in the production of metal objects across the Caucasus. This ‘Caucasian Metallurgical Province’, as Chernykh has termed the region, covered a much smaller geographical area than contemporary metalworking provinces in Eurasia and central Asia, but was second to none in terms of the sophistication of its products and the volume of production.2 During the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age I (early Iron Age), a cultural continuum that lasted through to about 800 BC, the Caucasus nonetheless witnessed more social and cultural fragmentation than in previous periods.3

Settlement patterns and social organisation also changed. The remnants of villages increased in number and their remains were now more visible on the landscape. In the early stage of the Late Bronze Age, hamlets were scattered across the plains and low-rising terraces on both sides of the Caucasus.At the

1 On the Near East and Mediterranean Late Bronze Age collapse, see Drews 1995; Cline 2014.The concept of collapse is well covered in McAnany andYoffee 2010.

2 Chernykh 1992: 275–95.

3In Armenia, the term ‘Iron Age I’ has been substituted for ‘Early Iron Age’, see Smith et. al. 2009: 29 and passim. On the whole, this seems applicable to the rest of the Caucasus and Iron Age I is used here.

378

The transition from the Late Bronze to the Iron Age brought other significant changes.The ostentatious tombs for the elite that so marked the Middle Bronze Age became a thing of the past, and with them, gold work. Although barrow burials continued, they were fewer in number and smaller in size. In their place came a series of rather standardised and unassuming earthen pit graves, at times defined by wooden panels and roofs, or by slabs of stone that lined their walls. Nonetheless, they are replete with a wealth of either warrior symbols such as bronze daggers,swords,spears,and axe heads,or by a wide range of jewellery items.

With the increased quantity of metal objects came technological advances. Bronze working became quite refined, with artisans mastering openwork decoration, while the novel technique of lost-wax casting enabled hollow items to be produced.These innovations permitted both the creation of intricate items and the minimisation of precious raw materials used. After 800 BC, when iron metallurgy was commonplace, bronze working was consigned mostly to jewellery making. Potters were a less adventurous crowd.They still preferred to fashion containers by hand, but had started to experiment with the wheel, resulting in a varied range of new forms.

Cultural interaction crisscrossed the whole of the Caucasus and extended well beyond its boundaries. Indeed, more than in any other period, the region lived up to its metaphorical identity as an isthmus connecting the world of Europe with that of the Near East. It absorbed influences from both regions, but never to the point of drowning out its own distinctive cultural traits, which communities maintained with palpable tenacity. To what degree these fundamental changes can be attributed to the influx of new peoples into the Caucasus, or to the adoption and modification of novel ideas, or to native ingenuity has been a much-debated issue.

Local archaeologists working in the Caucasus have collectively identified no less than seven archaeological traditions during this period (Figure 8.1):

•Lchashen-Tsitelgori – incorporating the Armenia-specific LchashenMetsamor horizon and the now out-dated CentralTranscaucasian or East Georgian culture situated in the central and southern south Caucasus,6

•Ghodshali-Kedabeg – the Karabakh Gandsha horizon in the Nakhichevan region and parts of Azerbaijan.7

6Martirosian 1964, 1969; Badalyan et al. 2009. In Armenia, the Lchashen-Metsamor cultural horizon is subdivided into three Late Bronze Age periods (Lchashen-Metsamor 1–3), two Iron Age I (a and b) periods corresponding to Lchashen-Metsamor 4–5, and an Iron Age II (a and b) coeval with the period of Urartu (Lchashen-Metsamor 6). A considerable amount of this nuanced periodisation is based on a seriation of pottery from burials, see Smith et al. 2009: 33–93; for overviews on the Central Transcaucasian

and East Georgian terms, see Pitskhelauri 1973, 1995.

7 For a useful study of the so-called Ghodshali-Kedabeg culture, also referred to as Khojaly-Gedebey, based on early collections found in European museums, see Ateşi

Figure 8.1. Map showing the Late Bronze Age-Iron Age I traditions (drawn by

C.Jayasuriya).

•Koban – the central and western Caucasus8

•Colchian – western Georgia9

•Talish – the south-eastern tip of Azerbaijan, extending along the Elburz region of northern Iran10

•Samtavro – central Georgia and the Shida Kartli region11

•Kaiakent-Chorochoi – eastern Caucasus12

A close examination of the evidence, however, reveals that only the first four of these traditions can be defined as discrete cultural units based on specific artefact types, modes of burial, and general settlement patterns. Even then, their ancient boundaries were never sharp, owing to the considerable flow of

2015. See also Pogrebova 2011, Schachner 2001.There is also Pitskhelauri in Miron and Orthmann 1995: 103.

8For the traditional view that distinguishes Koban from Colchis, see Kozenkova 1996: 62–73, fig. 26; Cf. Reinhold (2007: 12–27) and Apakidze (2009), who believe they

should be clumped together. 9 Koridze 1965;Apakidze 2009.

10For early discussions, see de Morgan 1896, summarised by Schaeffer 1948: 404–43; Iessen 1935. More recent studies include Makhmudov 2008, Castelluccia 2016, and those that concern the Gilan and Mazandarn region in Iran, such as Piller 2012.

11Sadradze 2002; R.Abramishvili 2003;Akhvlediani 2005. Pitskhelauri 1973 takes a different view on East Georgian chronology.

12Kruglov 1958; Markovin 1994b.