Giorgi Leon Kavtaradze
Arkeolojiyle Geçen Bir Yaşam
İçin Yazılar
Veli Sevin’e Armağan
SCRIPTA
Essays
in Honour of Veli Sevin
A
Life Immersed in Archaeology
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Aynur Özfırat
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İçindekiler / Contents
Sunuş (Aynur Özfırat) ................................................................................................................................
VII
Prof. Dr. Veli Sevin (Özgeçmiş ve Bibliyografya)
.....................................................................................
IX
“ ... Yalnızca Geçmiş Değildir...” (Gülriz Kozbe)
......................................................................................
XXI
Modern Bir Alarod...
(Hatice Kalkan)
........................................................................................................
XXIII
Arkeolojinin Âlimi (Şevket Dönmez)
.........................................................................................................
XXV
Yazılar / Essays
Mehmet Işıklı
Yükseklerde Arkeoloji Yapmak. Doğu Anadolu Arkeolojisinin Dünü-Bugünü .......................................... 1
Giorgi L. Kavtaradze
Transcaucasia and
the Problem of the Uruk Cultural Phenomenon
.............................................................. 13
Antonio Sagona
The Kura-Araxes
Culture Complex: A History of Early Research
................................................................ 21
Veli Bahşaliyev
Archaeological
Research of Monuments in the Vicinity of Sirab
.................................................................. 33
Arsen Bobokhyan – Ruben Davtyan
From Metsamor to Ugarit: Patterns of Economy and Cultural
Contact in Late Bronze Age Armenia .......... 49
Bahlul Ibragimli
About Collective
Burial Places in Nakhchivan ...............................................................................................
79
Farshid Iravani Ghadim
Jafar Abad Kurgan No IV
................................................................................................................................
87
Charles Burney
Some Thoughts on
the Origins and Background of the Kingdom of Urartu
.................................................... 107
Aynur Özfırat
Aktaş: Ağrı Dağı’nın
Kuzey Eteğinde Aras Vadisi’nde Bir Urartu Kalesi
...................................................... 111
Raffaele Biscione – Roberto Dan
Ranking and
Distribution of the Urartian Fortifications in Turkey
.................................................................. 121
Altan Çilingiroğlu
Ayanis Kalesi’nde Mısır Mavisi (Egyptian Blue)
.............................................................................................
137
Aylin Ü. Erdem
Urartu Kalelerinde Çanak Çömleğin Depolanmasıyla
İlgili Uygulamalar ........................................................
147
Yervand Grekyan
Helmet and Beard
Depicting of Enemies in Urartian Bronze Art
...................................................................... 155
Oscar White Muscarella
Libation “Lion/Hand”
Bowls: An Overview
.......................................................................................................
175
Geoffrey Summers
Of Boats and
Biplanes: Enigmatic Doodles at Çarpanak in Lake Van
................................................................ 195
Stephan Kroll
Notes on the
Post-Urartian (Median) Horizon in NW-Iran and Armenia
............................................................. 203
Hatice Kalkan
Doğu Anadolu’da Bir Post Urartu Formu: Tankard
...............................................................................................
211
Hiromichi Oguchi
The Distribution
of Nuzi Ware and Its Implication
................................................................................................
215
A. Tuba Ökse – Ahmet Görmüş
Demir Çağında Salat Tepe
......................................................................................................................................
233
Gülriz Kozbe
Kavuşan Höyük/Diyarbakır Yeni Assur Dönemi
Gömüleri ....................................................................................
257
Aram Kosyan
To The East of Hatti
.................................................................................................................................................
277
Önder Bilgi
İkiztepe’den Ünik Bir Mızrakucu
.............................................................................................................................
283
Şevket Dönmez
Kuzey-Orta Anadolu’da Yeni Bir Arkeolojik Keşif: Oluz Höyük Kubaba (Matar
Kubileya) Tapınağı
(Kızılırmak Kavsi İçinde Ana Tanrıça İle İlgili Güncel Bulgular) ...........................................................................
289
Zafer Derin
İzmir-Yeşilova Höyüğü Neolitik Mühürleri
..............................................................................................................
305
Arsen Bobokhyan
Troy and Ebla:
Cognitive Links Between Two Ancient Capitals
..............................................................................
313
Eşref Abay
Beycesultan’dan Ayak Biçimli Bir
Riton
...................................................................................................................
345
Engin Akdeniz – Safiye Akdeniz
Anadolu’da Kültürel Devamlılığa
Manisa’dan Bir Örnek; Niobe Mitolojisinden
Yedi Kızlara ................................ 349
Ferudun Özgümüş
Afrodisias’taki Semitik Kültler Üzerine Bazı Düşünceler
..........................................................................................
355
Necla Arslan Sevin
Antik Çağ ve Sonrasında
Civa-Zencefre Kullanımı
ve Neikaia Kenti ........................................................................
363
Oğuz Tekin
Some Hellenistic
Weights in the Çanakkale Museum
.................................................................................................
375
Christopher S.
Lightfoot
Learning and
Literacy at Byzantine Amorium
.............................................................................................................
381
Müge Savrum Kortanoğlu
Arkeolojik Alanlarda Alan Yönetimi Planlamasının Hukuksal ve Kurumsal Açıdan
Değerlendirilmesi ................... 387
Ayla Sevim Erol – Pınar
Gözlük Kırmızıoğlu
Karagündüz
Ortaçağ İnsanlarında
Diş Çürüğü”
...........................................................................................................
393
[pp. 13-20]
TRANSCAUCASIA
AND THE PROBLEM
OF
THE URUK CULTURAL PHENOMENON
Giorgi L. Kavtaradze*
Dr.
Giorgi Leon Kavtaradze, Dr habil., PhD, Chief Researcher of the Ivane
Javakhishvili Institute of History & Ethnology,
Tbilisi, Georgia.
E.mail: [email protected]
Abstract
If
G. Algaze’s theory based on the supposed unbalanced
relations between a main centre (southern Mesopotamia with city-states) and a
less developed periphery (northern Mesopotamia, Iran, Anatolia and beyond) led
to the emergence of a number of archaeological publications about the Late Uruk economic colonial system and its expansion at one
time, now when B. Peasnall and M. S. Rothman found
reasons to challenge above-mentioned theory and proved that economic and
political complexity in the north were developing before intensified
interaction with the south, the time has come for the formation of a more
balanced view on the problem of the relationship between the south and the
north.
As
the later stage of Middle Uruk and the Late Uruk period is contemporary with the Kura-Araxes culture of
the advanced stage, it is impossible to date the archaeological material
comparable with the culture of Uruk and found at the
Caucasian so-called Chalcolithic sites of the
‘pre-Kura-Araxes’ time by the Late (or even Middle) Uruk
period. Therefore, the conclusion can only be one: the aforementioned parallels
of the pre-Kura-Araxes period relate mainly to the Early Uruk
or pre-Uruk/Ubaid period,
if we assume that in shaping of the Mesopotamian Uruk
culture attended cultural influx of Caucasian origin.
One of
the most important aims, for the archaeologists working on problems of
archaeology of the northern periphery of Near East and basing themselves on
recent researches in the Caucasus of the 4th millennium B.C., is to establish the links between the
cultural and social developments of the Caucasus and distinct regions of the
Near East (i.e., eastern Anatolia,
the Levant, Mesopotamia and western Iran) within the context of the Uruk cultural phenomenon. New indications on the
overlapping in time of the Kura-Araxes and Uruk
cultures, which have been revealed recently with much more intensity than
before, poses not only the problem of relation between these cultures but gives
possibility to reconsider the character of cultural and social developments
between the highly civilized societies of the core area of the Near East and its northern periphery and the
regions located beyond of the latter even in the earlier times.
By the
widely held view, southern Mesopotamian merchants of the late period of the
Middle Uruk and Late Uruk,
hungry for semi-precious stones, timber and metal ores, established a whole
range of trading-outposts along the routes going to the mountains of Zagros and
Taurus and the Caucasus. Basing on G. Algaze’s
theory, about the underdevelopment of northern societies and the dominance of
southern city-states who obtain desired goods from the periphery through a kind
of economic colonial system (Algaze 1993passim), whole range of archaeological
publications appeared about the so-called Late Uruk
expansion, most of which were linked with the supposed unbalanced relations
between a main centre (southern Mesopotamia with its growing cities and
administration) and a less developed periphery (Anatolia and northern
Mesopotamia): colonisation, search for land, escape
from pressure, search for raw materials, etc.
(Cf. Lyonnet 2010: 358).
Already
in the mid-70’s, some Russian archaeologists (R. Munchaev,
M. Andreeva) noticed among Mesopotamian artifacts of
the 4th millennium, especially in ceramics, pottery similar to the early period
of Maikop and proposed formation of the Maikop culture of the north-western Caucasus in consequence of the
infiltration of the Near Eastern/Mesopotamian groups of the population into the
northern Caucasus (cf. Munchaev 1975: 328-334, 375-377; Andreeva
1977: 56). The problem emerged also in
the consequence of excavation of Kavtiskhevi kurgan
of the pre-Kura-Araxes period in central Georgia. Similar kurgans have been
recently excavated at Soyuq Bulaq
in western Azerbaijan dating to the beginning of the 4th millennium.
It seems that this type of burial construction in Transcaucasia started nearly
1500 year earlier than traditionally was accepted. These kurgans belong to the
so-called Leylatepe culture which is considered as
connected with the Uruk tradition. Archaeologists
came to conclusion that the practice of kurgan burial had been already well
established in the southern Caucasus during the Late Chalcolithic,
the pottery from burials shows affiliation with Late Chalcolithic
2-3 pottery from northern Mesopotamia (Lyonnet, Akhundov,
Almamedov et
al., 2008: 27-44; Museyibli, 2008: 22). In
their opinion, the Leylatepe culture tribes
afterwards migrated to the north in the mid-fourth millennium and played an
important part in the rise of the Maikop culture of
the northern Caucasus (Museyibli, 2008: 22).
However,
this very complex and controversial issue – the origin and spread of burials
with the kurgan tradition – requires a full and comprehensive study of
archaeological data of the vast areas of the Eurasian steppes, where they are so typical and even
dictated by the character of environment that it is difficult to imagine how
they could have their origin in any other place, and a much broader scope of research integrity as well than we
have at our disposal today.
For
specialists, the fact that the founders of culture Leylatepe
were migrants from Mesopotamia is without a doubt, but problem
is now a more precise definition of the time of this migration
(Almamedov 2008: 21-22). If earlier it was thought, that the wave of migrants from
Mesopotamia to the Caucasus belonged to the representatives of Ubaid culture and this view was generally accepted (cf. Narimanov 1991: 32), today this wave is mainly determined
as belonging to a later, Uruk period, when the
Mesopotamian culture spread wider in the north-western and north-eastern
direction. They, unlike their predecessors, do not consider anymore the bearers of Ubaid
culture as the founders of so-called Leylatepe
culture, but to the Mesopotamian Uruk tradition
distributed to Transcaucasia. Still other specialists speak about the Ubaid-Uruk period, which of course means the time of Ubaid/Uruk transition, the
cultural period in northern Mesopotamia during which S. Lloyd has seen the crucial indicator
of new era, unprecedented increase of metal objects (Lloyd 1978: 75).
If Uruk colonies, as a rule, are distinguishable from the
indigenous settlements around them by a complex of material culture: pottery
and other artifacts, architecture and graves, we have in the Caucasus quite
different situation. More and more sites belonging to the culture of
Leylatepe are detected every year in
southern Transcaucasia (see Almamedov 2012) and
therefore to speak only about of some outposts of Uruk
colonists becomes quite irrelevant. As it has been expected, some
archaeologists already began to speak about the penetration of large masses of
people of a quite new migrants for this region – bearers of Mesopotamian, Uruk tradition in the middle of the 4th
millennium, who settled down in every region of the Caucasus, in the mountains
and flatlands, fundamentally changing the character of area and directing the
economic and social development of the host society along a radically new and
progressive path. In Transcaucasia, they have allegedly developed
culture of Leylatepe tradition. Afterwards they
penetrated the North Caucasus as well in large masses and rather intensively
and took participation in the creation of the northern Caucasian Maikop cultural tradition, covering the entire territory of
the Caucasus. Consequently, some archaeologists are connecting to the migration
of the Uruk colonists not only the emergence of the Maikop culture, but as well, and primarily, of the Transcaucasian Chalcolithic
culture which afterwards have been spread from there into the northern Caucasus
(e.g., Museyibli 2008: 22;
cf. Munchaev and Amirov
2012: 37-46). In their opinion, Uruk migrants had learned in the north how to build this
type of burial mounds and brought the acquired tradition back to the South
Caucasus (Akhundov 2010; cf. Pitskhelauri 2012: 154-157).
Rather complicated picture, isn’t it?
This is
the most intriguing, that recently, on a number of sites of Transcaucasian
sites were detected signs of the Ubaid culture. In the second horizon of Areni-1 cave in the Vayots Dzor region of southern Armenia, the pottery reveals the co-existence
of sites of the Areni cultural traditions with the
sites of Leylatepe – Teghut
– Berikldeebi group, on the one hand, and with Tilkitepe I (in eastern Anatolia, near the Van Lake), on
the other. Some designs of the painted pottery of Areni
reveal similarity with the material of the Mesopotamian type from Menteshtepe (Zardaryan and Gasparian 2012: 48) where recent researches prove ties with
the Mesopotamian cultures during the Terminal Ubaid and the transitional phase to the Late Chalcolithic, especially in its pottery (Lyonnet 2010a). At the same time, in Nerkin Godedzor,
Vorotan river canyon (Syunik,
Armenia) large quantity of painted pottery of the Ubaid
culture has been recovered. Godedzor probably
represents one of the northernmost settlement discovered so far, which
indicates a clear North Ubaid-related ceramic
horizon. Its ceramic assemblage helps us to define more precisely the northern
borders of an area (including Iranian Azerbaijan) culturally related to the Ubaid developments taking place in southern and northern
Mesopotamia. The site was possibly located on the edges of a region that was
within the interaction sphere of the Ubaid-related
communities of northwest Iran.
To the north, in the Lesser Caucasus and the
Ararat Plain regions, the local communities (Sioni
complex) were developing at a totally different and autonomous pace (Chataigner et al.
2010: 391). The fact
that the archaeological material of Sioni-Tsopi group
of Georgia could be dated as synchronous with North Ubaid
period is proved by the findings of Sioni-type
pottery with ‘combed patterns’ in Alikemektepe
together with North Ubaid type pottery (Кavtaradze
1983, 58). The
pottery of the North Ubaid type was found at the
Armenian site Teghut, as well (Munchaev
1975: 120). At the same time, in the layers of Abdal-aziztepe the
layers of Ilanlitepe-Alikemektepe type were
overlapped by the material characteristic for sites of Leylatepe
group (Aliev and Narimanov 2001).
Drastic
changes in the ceramic material and architecture of the central Transcaucasian sites (e.g.,
in Mentesh Tepe) are
observable during the transitional phase from the Middle to the Late Chalcolithic period, sometime during the second half of the
5th millennium, clearly pointing to influences from northern
Mesopotamia, even though local features are still visible (Lyonnet
et al. 2012: 177-178). In the
opinion of Azerbaijanian archaeologists painted
designs on the Mughan steppe pottery (Alikemektepe etc.)
only imitates the 5th millennium North Ubaid
painted tradition and is more roughly made and technologically inferior,
therefore there is no need to explain their appearance in the south-eastern
Transcaucasia by the migration of the population with the Ubaid
cultural tradition (Almamedov 2008: 17, 19-20).
Perhaps the explanation of above fact, we can get by the remark of G. Stein,
that the culture of Ubaid type has spread gradually
outside of its core area and was
selectively appropriated by the communities located there, who transformed and
used the distinctive elements of above culture in ways that were fundamentally
different from superficially similar sites with Ubaid
culture in southern Mesopotamia. These local regional identities persisted in
parallel with Ubaid identities, but seem to have been
expressed in different social and cultural context (Stein
and Özbal 2007; Stein 2010).
Recently,
C. Marro, who had connected chaff-faced wares
collected in the eastern Lake Van district with the Caucasian Chalcolithic pottery and had related these to similar Amuq E/F wares found south of the Taurus mountains in
northern Mesopotamia, interpreted these resemblances as a sign of an intrusion
of North Mesopotamian immigrants into the Caucasus prior to the well-known Uruk “expansion” to the north along the Upper Euphrates (Marro, 2000; see Kohl, 2007a: 167). B. Lyonnet
places the Caucasus within the ‘pre-Uruk expansion’
phenomenon, the nature of which, in her words, is still to be understood (Lyonnet 2010: 358) and which now needs to be transported
earlier (beginning of the Uruk period) and farther
north (the Caucasus). The ‘center and periphery’ explanation seems her far too
simple solution, as influences were reciprocal and more indicating on the ‘equal’ relations between the two areas, borrowing something from
each other (Lyonnet 2007; Lyonnet 2010: 359).
The name
of this period – ‘pre-Uruk’
was quite logically created to distinguish it from the Late Uruk
expansion towards the Upper Euphrates area, because the latter, as recently has
become clear, can’t be used to explain Mesopotamian-Caucasian
connections even from pure chronological reasons. The Late Uruk
expansion is in reality much later phenomenon than above-mentioned Mesopotamian
ties of Caucasian archaeological material.
But such
a dichotomy – Late Uruk vs. ‘pre-Uruk’ – seems worth-less, there
is no real need to invent new terms to overcome a chronological discrepancy. If
earlier it was thought, that the wave of migrants from Mesopotamia to the
Caucasus belonged to the representatives of Ubaid
culture and this view was generally accepted. In the 80’s of the last century
was believed that so-called Leylatepe culture emerged
as a result of the migration of the bearers of the Ubaid
culture from Mesopotamia to Transcaucasia (cf. Narimanov
1991: 32). Though, nowadays, as already emphasized above,
this wave is determined as belonging to a later, Uruk
period, when the Mesopotamian culture spread wider in the north-western and
north-eastern direction. The term – ‘Ubaid expansion’ was replaced by the
concept – ‘Uruk
expansion’, to denote, one and the same phenomenon – Mesopotamian ties of Caucasian cultures.
It is
not very difficult to guess that the evidence of some Transcaucasian
sites with import or imitation of Ubaid pottery is
quite impossible to fit with the era of expansion of the Uruk
culture outside its Mesopotamian homeland from the chronological point of view.
It is very difficult either to imagine that the resettlement of Uruk colonists in the Caucasus took place in the Late Uruk period. We ought to take into account also facts of the
discovery of Kura-Araxes pottery of the advanced stage in the layers of late
Middle and Late Uruk colonies along the Upper
Euphrates (cf. discussion below). These facts are obvious indications on the
discrepancy of chronological character.
One of
the most important aims, for specialists working on problems of the Near Eastern archaeology and basimg themselves on recent researches in Transcaucasia and
eastern Anatolia of the Late Chalcolithic-Early
Bronze age, is to elaborate a common periodisation
and chronological construction for establishing the links between the cultural
and social developments in different regions of the Near East (i.e., southern and northern Mesopotamia,
the Levant, eastern Anatolia, western Iran and the Caucasus) within the context
of the Uruk cultural phenomenon. After the emergence
of the cultural community of the Uruk type, i.e., ‘the Uruk
civilization’, which in addition to the Near East included the Caucasus as
well, cultural impulses coming from the more advanced south
reached the latter with intensity.
As it
seems impossible to date by the Late (or even Middle) Uruk
period the archaeological material comparable with the culture of Uruk and found at the Caucasian so-called Chalcolithic sites of the ‘pre-Kura-Araxes’ time, there is
left only one possibility to relate the aforementioned parallels of the
pre-Kura-Araxes period mainly to the Early Uruk
period or even to the pre-Uruk/Ubaid.
But are there any chances for this assumption?
In my
opinion, we have such opportunity. If we intend to date the Late Chalcolithic culture of the Caucasus and its hypothetical contacts with the ‘Urukians’, it is necessary to pay due attention to the
dating of starting point of the Kura-Araxes culture and simultaneously
determine to which period of time belongs the still unsolved problem of
interrelation between the Caucasian Chalcolithic and Uruk cultures. For this one of the first tasks should be
the definition of the time of penetration of the Kura-Araxes culture in the
Middle East. More and more, it is now clear that the later stage of Middle Uruk and the Late Uruk period is
contemporary with the Kura-Araxes culture of the advanced stage which
characterizes by a red-and-black burnished pottery.
I have
had in mind the fact of the Transcaucasian origin of
the Kura-Araxes culture and its later spread to the Middle East, where
archaeological strata were more accurately dated than in Transcaucasia – these circumstances were giving us a favorable
opportunity to determine the starting date of this culture in Transcaucasia.
This culture covers a much larger area than the land between the two rivers in
Transcaucasia, the Kura and the Araxes; indeed it covers an important part of the
Middle East i.e., eastern Anatolia,
the Levant and north-western Iran. However, Transcaucasia is generally accepted
to represent the core area of the
initial formation of the Kura-Araxes culture. The dating of the first obvious
signs of the Kura-Araxes culture found in
situ in the layers of local cultures of the Middle East represented the terminus ante quem
for similar and antedating archaeological artifacts of Transcaucasian
Kura-Araxes culture. The dates obtained for the
archaeological material of the Kura-Araxes origin detected in the Near Eastern cultural
layers, by correlation with the evidence of historical sources of Mesopotamia
and Egypt, constitute an important argument per
se to demonstrate the necessity of considerably shifting back of the
accepted dating of the Transcaucasian Kura-Araxes
culture, as the latter belongs to the period earlier than the Near Eastern
“Kura-Araxes” materials; consequently, this could be done even without using the calibrated
radiocarbon dates.
In the north-western
part of the Middle East in the Late Uruk period a remarkable phenomenon took place – the destruction of the
sites with traits typical of Late Uruk period, and
appearance of signs of the so-called Kura-Araxes culture of the northern
origin. The Kura-Araxes pottery of the advanced stage has
been discovered in the layers of Late Uruk colonies
along the Upper Euphrates. It seems that
economical importance of the Late Uruk enclaves and outposts,
such as Arslantepe VIA, Hassek Höyük 5, Habuba Kabira-Tell Qanas, Jebel Aruda, Tepecik 3 as well as of Godin Tepe V in western-central Iran, attracted the attention of
these invaders – characterized by the red-black, hand-made burnished
pottery, the high-arsenic copper metallurgy and certain types of metal artifacts, the ‘wattle and daub’ houses and the particular
type of hearths. The intrusive character of the Kura-Araxes culture in this
area became obvious after the exposure of the stratigraphical
sequence documented at Arslantepe where level
VIB1 containing the material of this culture interrupted the preceding
(level VIA) and following development (level VIB2) of local horizons (cf., e.g., Kavtaradze
1999: 78f.; Kavtaradze 2004: 543-546).
But even earlier,
already during Arslantepe VII layer, there were found
sherds of the red-black, hand-made, but of the high
technological level burnished pottery, supposedly of the Kura-Araxes origin. They appear gradually at Arslantepe in period VII, overlapping with chaff-faced buff
or red-slipped wares that are generally linked to the northern
Syria-Mesopotamian environment. In the opinion of M. Frangipane, this finding clearly points to the fact that even at
the end of period VII in Arslantepe local population
was in contact with the communities of the Kura-Araxes cultural traditions (Frangipane 2000: 443, 444), – the circumstance which permits us to propose the
existence of the bearers of the latter traditions already at that time, i.e., during the Middle Uruk period. At the same time, we should have in mind the
fact, that the red-and-black type pottery of the Kura-Araxes cultures is a sign
not of earlier, but of the developed stage of this culture. It should also be borne in
mind that Velikent, the site of Kura-Araxes culture
on the Caspian Plain of southern Daghestan which does
not belong to the initial area of this culture, has been inhabited since the
rather early times – ca. 3600–3500 B.C. (cf. Kohl 2009: 246, 255).
Consequently,
the overview of evidence from chronologically
relevant layers containing some archaelogical signs
of the Kura-Araxes culture allows us at the present stage of our knowledge to
put the starting date of this culture in Transcaucasia somewhere during the
Middle Uruk period, at least. In the following time, in the second half of the 4th
millennium nearly simultaneously on the northern periphery of the Middle East
the activity of the Uruk colonists and the bearers of
the Kura-Araxes culture can be traced.
Most
recent discoveries from Areni-1 put the bar even higher, demonstrating that the
origin of the distinctive Kura-Araxes cultural artifact assemblage lies in the
Late Chalcolithic of the late 5th to early
4th millennia (Wilkinson et
al. 2012: 20). In the opinion of the members of excavating team, Areni-1
can be placed in the putative hiatus between the Late Chalcolithic
Sioni and the fully developed Kura-Araxes culture
(Wilkinson et al. 2012: 30, cf. Kohl
2007: 69, 70). But how all this could be reconciled with the supposed contacts
of the pre-Kura-Araxian population of the Caucasus
with ‘Urukians’?
This is
quite impossible to imagine that the ‘resettlement’ of Uruk
colonists in the Caucasus, reliably assigned to pre-Kura-Araxes times, could
take place in the Late Uruk period. Timely remark was
made by P. Kohl, that the well-known Uruk expansion
has its predecessor, though it have left far less footprints for their presence
in the Caucasus and therefore “No Habuba Kabira has been uncovered in the Caucasus region, and its
discovery would be most unlikely” (Kohl 2007a: 168). But who was this
predecessor? “That’s question!”
Although
for a long time nearly all important cultural innovations in the Caucasus are
attributed to the impulses coming from the Near East, in my book published
already in 1981, I have tried to determine the age of Teghut
(in the Ararat valley,
Armenia) and the sites of its circle, by paying attention to the problem
of origin of Gawra XIA cultural complex, which in my
opinion had some traits typical for Teghut (Kavtaradze 1981). Well known fact, that in Tepe Gawra the transformation or
change from Ubaid to Uruk
is very well visible. It was declared that a study of ceramic change in the Ubaid and Uruk periods of
Mesopotamia illustrates how ‘degeneration’ can be correlated with the
development of complex societies in the region. Between the Ubaid
and Uruk layers is visible obvious and sudden
change in pottery: fabric becomes ‘decidedly inferior’, shapes – crude, profiles – irregular; almost all
distinctive late Ubaid forms disappear, in strata XIA
tournette used less often than in XII. Painting
ceases and no other ornamentation takes its place until painted pottery regains
popularity in the latest Uruk/early Jamdat Nasr levels
(Falconer 1981: 54, 59, 60).
Then I supposed, and I still support this idea, that first of all the admixture of new population ought to be main reason of such a change in the culture. The archaeological material of Gawra XIA reveals some hereditary ties, though perhaps not a direct, with the material typical of Teghut (Kavtaradze 1981: pl. III, IV; Kavtaradze 1983: 56). For example, some similarities can be observed between the pottery and figurines of Gawra XIA and Teghut. In regards to architecture, if rectangular houses were characteristic of Gawra XII, in the subsequent level, Gawra XIA, round houses (Tobler 1950, pls VI, VIII) appeared, that are typical of the early farming communities of Transcaucasia. It is interesting that the people of Gawra XII and XIA used various types of copper ores; however, copper of the later level differs in the high content of arsenic (Tobler 1950: 212; Kavtaradze 1983: 56, n.144, n.146; Kavtaradze 1999: 73). It should be noted as well that the sharp and full difference is noticeable between the pottery of Gawra XII and XIA levels (Perkins 1949: 165-167; Porada 1965: 146). The Gawra XIA pottery is of a very low quality compared to its predecessor (Perkins 1949: 166). Perhaps in shaping of the Mesopotamian Uruk culture attended cultural influx of Caucasian origin.
Though
the culture of Uruk or Uruk
civilization was distributed over a wide area from the Levant to central Iran
by local traders and colonists, causing the emergence of new colonies with
local economies, the problem of its origin is controvercial.
Initially, H. Frankfort tied it to the migratory movements from the westernmost
part of Anatolia, because he had noticed certain peculiarities in the culture
of Uruk for which he could not find prototypes in the
preceding Ubaid culture. This Anatolian characteristics
were the use of clays of purposedly different
composition to obtain the red colour, muffled firing
to obtain the grey ware, the use of a slip, the vertical piercing of the lugs,
and the occurrence of stone vases (Frankfort 1932; cf. Hutchinson 1935, 211-222). I would like to remind as well that by the
old, traditional viwpoint expressed by A. J. Tobler, Braidwoods etc. the Gawra
XIA-Amuq F cultural complex belongs to the newcomers
in northern Mesopotamia and the Amuq valley
(Braidwood and Braidwood, 1960: 513; Tobler 1950:
24-26). Later became a popular concept according to which the formation of ‘Uruk civilization’ is seen as a result of a gradual transition from
domestically produced on a slow wheel painted pottery to a mass-produced by
craftsmen on a fast wheel unpainted pottery. But data of Transcaucasian
archaeological material, in my opinion, contradict to the point of view of pure
technological explanation of the derivation of Uruk
pottery and its subsequent distribution from Mesopotamia to the Caucasus.
In
connection with the problem of Mesopotamian-Caucasian interrelation, especially
actual and stimulating seem B. Lyonnet’s
observations. B. Lyonnet emphasizes
the importance the Caucasus area played in the formation of
the Uruk culture of Mesopotamia (Lyonnet 2010: 363). B. Lyonnet
emphasizes that it is difficult to consider Transcaucasia only as a periphery
which provided raw materials and that such an opinion does not fit well with
its level of development reached during the Neolithic, with the complexity of
the burials and their wealth during the Chalcolithic
and what is known about metal production there. Even more, several innovations
that appear at that time in Mesopotamia seem to have been borrowed from the
Caucasian area because of their long tradition there, like the use of firing in
a reducing atmosphere, the polishing on ceramics, the combed decoration, the
so-called ‘Cananean’ blades or the introduction of
sheep-breeding for the production of wool (Lyonnet
2007; Lyonnet 2010: 362-363).
It seems
that the time has come now for the formation of a more balanced view on
the problem of interrelation between the south and the north. R.
Munchaev and Sh. Amirov
recently even proposed an idea about the shaping of the Halaf culture of Mesopotamia by the cultural influence coming from
Transcaucasia (Munchaev and Amirov 2009: 45). But only one thing we can say with certainty, the north
was not a backward periphery of the south.
Nowadays, it is admitted that the Mesopotamians
did not dominate the people of distant peripheries. If G. Algaze’s
theory based on the supposed unbalanced relations between a main centre
(southern Mesopotamia with city-states) and a less developed periphery
(northern Mesopotamia, Iran, Anatolia and beyond) led to the creation of the popular view-point about the Late Uruk economic colonial
system and its expansion on one and the same time (see, above), now B. Peasnall and M. S. Rothman, studying scrupulously the Tepe
Gawra excavation reports in the funds of Pennsylvania
Museum and not only that,
found reasons to challenge G. Algaze’s theory and
proved that economic and political complexity in the north were developing
before intensified interaction with the south (Peasnall and Rothman 2003:
38).
The recent discoveries made in northern
Mesopotamia at Brak and Hamoukar,
added to those made long ago at Tepe Gawra, showed that, already in the beginning of the 4th
millennium, the region was far more developed than expected (Lyonnet 2010: 358, 359). Comparisons of local context and Uruk show that peaceful interaction between them, which
lasted for 300-400 years, seems to have been in the form of symmetric economic
and political relations rather than colonialist dominance (Stein 2002).
The
distance-parity interaction model characteristic of the Uruk
colonies proposed by G. Stein (Stein 1998: 220-255) better explains the
organization and long-term effects of cultural contact between complex
societies and less developed neighboring polities than the hegemonic control by
the core area as postulated in the
alternative G. Algaze’s world system theory. The
leveling effects of distance give rise to a highly variable social landscape in
which the smaller, less complex polities of the ‘periphery’ could and did play
an active role in structuring networks of interregional interaction (Stein
1998: 220, 246-247). If with increasing distance it becomes difficult for
Mesopotamians to dominate local communities e.g.,
in south-eastern Anatolia etc. and
retaining economic autonomy in the Uruk enclaves
there, it would have be even more difficult to retain such dominance in the
Caucasus of the Chalcolithic age.
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