Wandering the highlands and valleys: Social and economic practices between the Late Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age in the Transcaucasus (2nd Phase)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Stöllner
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 424795509

The South Caucasus between the later 5th and early 3rd mill. BC is at the centre of the research work of this project. During this period, the region and its societies underwent a considerable transformation, which, with the emergence of the Kura-Araxes complex from the 35th/34th cent. BC, led to a culturally distinct and ultimately expansive phenomenon in Westasia. It resulted in the development of the large-scale Transcaucasian network in Western Asia (for the current state of research, see initial application). In the South Caucasus itself, this process was associated with new settlements in marginal and high mountainous areas. It was coupled with resource practices that presumably led to the permanent utilisation of pastureland and the increased exploitation of mineral resources. The economic archaeological data obtained so far show that the rather generalised and possibly extensive resource strategies of the 5th and early 4th mill. BC became more specialised with the Early Bronze Age. The project focusses in the 2nd phase on the comparison of several montane valley and mountain zones in the Lesser and Greater Caucasus, especially during the Early Bronze Age Kura-Araxes culture. The establishment of high-altitude settlement and economic clusters on the Javakheti Plateau and in the North Caucasian Khevshureti will be investigated, as will the question of resource exchange, mobility in the course of herding and the extraction of raw materials. The formation of strongly tied communities and genetic proximity between individual groups of settlers, as well as questions of early metallurgy and obsidian extraction, the basis of nutrition or the question of the utilisation and development of the first wool sheep breeds is therefore of ample importance. Questions about the economic and social dynamics between individual regions are therefore at the centre of the project. The study focusses at an interdisciplinary integration of data from different fields of investigation (archaeology, geoscientific archaeometry, genetics, anthropology, archaeozoology, isotope research on mobility and nutrition). The aim is to understand the different scenarios that characterised the South Caucasus at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Wolfgang Haak