Using specific tombs and diagnostic artefact types she has suggested that the Koban culture experienced four main cultural phases (Koban I–IV), extending from 1400 to 400 BC.10 Further detailed studies by Sabine Reinhold and new radiocarbon readings from sites in the high mountains around Kislovodsk confirm this broad timeline. Most exciting is the recent fieldwork carried out in high altitude regions, where intriguing stone structures have radiocarbon dates reaching back to about 1700 BC. That these Middle Bronze Age structures might eventually have led to the formation of the western Koban culture is a most persuasive idea.11

SETTLEMENTS

Koban settlements have received much less attention than they deserve. According to Kozenkova, villages occupied a diverse range of environments, and are spread from lowland plains to mountain altitudes in excess of 1,000 m asl. In recent years, these altitudes have been dramatically extended through the use of high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery, by means of which scores of structures have been detected within the 1,600–2,000 m belt.12 Sites can be situated on the tops of mountains, on the edges of steep river terraces, on rocky promontories, usually at the confluences of rivers, and also along riverbanks and lake shores.13

Settlements were not artificially fortified, but natural features such as ravines and lookouts were skilfully used as defensive features, enhanced occasionally by ramparts and moats.The size of the villages can be estimated mostly by the extent of sherd scatters across the ground surface. Some are relatively small, falling within an area of about 60 x 30 m, whereas others, such as Zol’skoe 1 and Uchkulanskoe, can be as large 1,000 x 400 m. Most settlements, however, fall between these two extremes, measuring about 1 or 2 ha, and are oblong or oval in plan. Although many are single-settlement sites, it is common to find historic (Sarmatian) overburden on others. Although some villages were isolated, there is a tendency for settlements to cluster, suggesting that communities may have had regional economic networks.

But it is Serzhen-Yurt, in Chechnia, with its arrangement of nineteen structures that has the clearest plan.14 Post-built with wattle walls rendered in clay, the dwellings comprised a series of units separated by narrow cobbled paths. Each house had habitation and processing areas, where stone and bone tools were shaped and food prepared.Amongst the fitments are bell-shaped storage pits, with a narrow opening (ca. 90 cm) and measuring larger than ca. 1.3 m

10Kozenkova 1996: 89–106.

11For a table of radiocarbon readings, see Reinhold et al. 2012: 11.

12Reinhold et al. 2012.

13Kozenkova 1989: 62–9; 1996: 33–40.

14Kozenkova 1992.

across the fl at bottom. Pits were situated around the food processing area and were filled with ash, fragments of stone grinders, and pottery sherds. Remnants of bones suggest that the community hunted and fished, farmed and kept livestock, mostly pig and large horned cattle.The preponderance of pigs (some 382 individual beasts) suggests a sedentary community, though pig rearing does not necessarily preclude some form of community mobility.15 In the western sector of the Koban province, livestock was primarily sheep and goats. Kozenkova appeals to the notion that the western Koban settlements constitute a type that derives from centuries earlier, and indeed she argues that it continued well into the historic periods.16 Without any robust evidence, this idea cannot be substantiated. Even so, judging by the size of the settlement, its metre of cultural deposit, and the length of occupation (late second through first millennium BC), Serzhen-Yurt was a favoured village.

Symmetrical and Linear Structures

Amongst the most intriguing and exciting structures are those recently discovered in the highest altitudes, above the 1,400 m mark (Figure 9.1). Clearly visible from the air, these stone structures are in some cases preserved up to 1.5 m above the ground. In their day, they would have supported a wooden superstructure. In general, these sites are perched on the edge of ravines near springs.17 Investigations in the Podkumok River valley in the Pyatigorsk district have documented 282 Late Bronze Age archaeological sites in this area alone.18 The majority of sites are settlements interspersed across the landscape with pastoral enclosures and menhirs.Three types of settlement have been discerned.Those with a symmetrical plan comprising rows houses of equal length enclosing a courtyard are the most common.Their houses are double-roomed, sometimes with an apse at one end. Rows of small, square, one-roomed houses arranged in a linear fashion form another settlement type, while the third group has a more or less circular arrangement. A series of radiocarbon readings has provided a developmental sequence stretching from linear settlements (1600–1300 BC) through those with an ovoid or roughly circular plan (1500– 1300 BC) to symmetrically planned settlements (1400–900 BC), which are the most numerous.19

The strategically positioned Gumbashi, located south of Kislovodsk, is provisionally categorised as a ‘fortress’. An initial magnetometry survey revealed

15Kozenkova 2001. On pigs amongst the Hittites and Kaska in Late Bronze Age northcentral Anatolia, see Glatz and Matthews 2005: 57.

16Kozenkova 1989: 63; 1992: 1.

17Reinhold 2016.

18Reinhold et al. 2007; Reinhold et al. 2012. Cf. Kozenkova’s (1989: 62) earlier survey of settlements, which mentions just eighty sites.

19Reinhold 2016.