SOUTH CAUCASIA IN THE NEOLITHIC TO EARLY BRONZE AGE (Central and Eastern Regions)

Abstract

The subsistence basis of every ethnocultural formation is tightly connected with the environment it inhabits. In the course of their expansion, ethnic groups tend to occupy environmental niches that provide all necessary resources for their future economic development. Cultural and technological progress can increase the immunity to diverse climatic changes, and access to other favourable niches is sought. Any imbalance between subsistence basis and environmental conditions leads to an ecological and economic crisis and can cause the disappearance of the group from the historical stage. Subsistence is only one of many components that shape the development, transformation and disappearance of ethno-cultural formations. This process is both complex and for every single case unique. It involves both regular and random factors, manifest through constant modification of ethno-cultural formations as well as through the constant transformation of their settlement topography. But the perception of all mechanisms of historical progress is impossible without considering the natural and climatic conditions where they occur. From the middle of the VIth millennium BC, human groups with the earliest forms of subsistence economy based on agri culture and cattle breeding inhabited the Ganja-Gazakh and Marneuli plains, preferably along the middle reaches of the Kura River. These first Neolithic communities are attested at Shomutepe and are hence labelled “Shomutepe culture”. The settlement Haci Elamxanli Tepe considered to be the earliest Neolithic site in the whole region From the beginning of the VIth millennium BC, the Neolithic farmers expanded to the Karabakh plain. Their economy relied on mixed agriculture, but cultural traditions were different. Following contacts with the Shomutepe culture population, the newcomers exerted their influence upon the local population as is clearly visible in the adoption of new technologies of ceramic production. The earliest Neolithic site known from the Karabakh region is the settlement Ismailbeytepe. In the last quarter of the VIth millennium BC, the piedmont zone of the Mughan plain between the bogs of the Caspian littoral and the northeastern slopes of the Talish Mountains were settled. The 34 population of Mughan was apparently close tothose of the Karabakh plain, although the sites may date later than the Karabakh sites. The best investigated site of this period is the settlement Alikemektepe. Almost a thousand years separate the earliest occupation phases in western Azerbaijan (Ganja - Gazakh and Marneuli plains) from the earliest sites in the Mughan steppes. The Karabakh Plain both chronologically and spatially occupy an intermediate position in this expansion process of the agrarian societies. All these factors allow us to assume that these technical achievements were preceded by a long period of development. But the southern Caucasus lands lack traces of possible predecessors, and even of groups with different cultural traditions. There is no link between the former foraging and the developed subsistence economy. Furthermore, no transitional forms of the later domesticated cereals and animals were discovered. In Southwestern Asia and Anatolia, where the subsistence economy had been introduced long before, this process is archaeologically well recorded. Possibly, the genetic roots for the South Caucasian Neolithic must be sought in these regions, because it appeared in its fully developed form in the South Caucasus. In the second half of the Vth millennium BC, a fundamentally new type of pottery, otherwise unknown in Southwestern Asia and Anatolia, occurs in the upper layers of the Neolithic settlements between the Mughan steppe up to the middle Kura River. Similiar ceramic production techniques and decoration patterns are known instead in the northern Caucasian regions. Possibly, ethno-cultural formations from Southeastern Europe, after crossing the Greater Caucasus, invaded South Caucasia, and their migrations proceeded without any noticeable impact on the cultural traditions of the local population in the region they crossed. Though still insufficiently investigated, similar short-term cultural influences from Southeastern Europe may have occurred in the Vth millennium BC. In the second quarter of the IVth millennium BC, the Uruk expansion reached Southern Caucasia. It initially contributed to the genesis of the Leilatepe culture and extended afterwards until the North Caucasus region where it influenced both the establishment of various local cultures and later-on of the Maikop culture. The new ethno-cultural formations initially preferred to settle on the abandoned settlement mounds of the Karabakh and other plains. No evidence of contact or even coexistence with previous inhabitants of this area has archaeologically been recorded, probably indicating a chronological gap. The arrival of the new settlers initiated the formation of local metallurgical traditions in the South Caucasus, which marks the first step in the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. The Uruk expansion up to the Caucasus was interrupted by the appearance of the Kura Araxes tribes in the regions adjacent to South Caucasia which led to the cutting of trade routes and hindered the transition to the Bronze Age. But the Kura Araxes culture remained outside the Caucasus and the region followed a purely regional development without any external influence. The expansion of the Kura Araxes tribes to the Caucasus chronologically coincided with a slight descent of atmospheric temperature and precipitation. The Caspian Sea was at a transgression stage, the rivers were repeatedly inundated. With mixed agriculture as subsistence economy, the Kura Araxes people could occupy various ecological niches. In adaptation to the new environmental conditions they founded their settlements not on flatlands, but on tops of natural mounds, high terraces or atop ancient settlement mounds. During their expansion to the Caucasus the Kura Araxes people were at the final stage of the Neolithic. Having inhabited the territory of Southern Caucasus they initiated the beginning of bronze metallurgy in this region. The transition from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age was completed only in the “post-Kura Araxes” period.