Collaborative Research: The Fortress and the Grassroots: Archaeological Investigations of Early Complex Societies on the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia

美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）将提供资金，资助两位博士进行为期两年的考古研究。Adam T. Smith（芝加哥大学），Ian Lindsay（普渡大学）和Lori Khatchadourian（康奈尔大学）研究了青铜时代晚期（约公元前1500-1150年）高加索南部最早的复杂社会政治政权的兴起。共同pi将与他们的长期合作者Ruben Badalyan博士（亚美尼亚考古和人种学研究所）以及一个由动物和植物分析，考古冶金学和地球化学专家组成的跨学科团队一起，通过在亚美尼亚中部Gegharot和Tsaghkahovit要塞遗址的两个季节的挖掘，调查区域独特的政治权威方法。围绕美索不达米亚和玛雅低地等典型中心建立的政治复杂性上升的传统模型，典型地将古代国家的起源描述为定居农业社区逐渐合并的结果，由此产生的盈余推动了新兴的政治经济。在南高加索，我们迄今为止的研究揭示了在公元前2000年中期的一个不同的政治融合过程，当时复杂的政治不是从定居的农业村庄出现的，而是从游牧的、等级分明的牧区群体中出现的。先前对Gegharot和Tsaghkahovit堡垒的挖掘已经发现了在精英机构的建筑离散区域中出现的新兴政治形式的诱人证据。最有趣的是，Gegharot的宗教建筑，包括祭坛和仪式设备（如审查器），揭示了储存和金属加工的证据，表明政治，经济和仪式机构的良好整合。在社会光谱的另一端，在Tsaghkahovit堡垒底部进行的测试挖掘和试点磁强计调查提供了青铜时代晚期住宅建筑群的第一个记录；然而，值得注意的是，住宅建筑的非正式性，加上相对较薄的单层建筑层，暗示着这个定居点可能没有堡垒那样持久，可能是由季节性的牧民占领的结果。我们的研究试图理解，当久坐不动的政治机构面临着对寻求维持其流动性历史遗产的臣民的统治权利合法化的前景时，团结得以维持的内部因素。通过持续的详细挖掘和地球物理调查，我们的目标是通过绘制堡垒和基层交接处青铜时代晚期政权的形成、运作和最终崩溃的图表，建立一个详细的实践模型，将该地区绑定到一个连贯的社会政治秩序中。由此产生的数据将影响更广泛的辩论，这些辩论以复杂社会政治制度的形成、主体社区的构成以及定居机构和游牧牧民的数字化为中心。该项目还将培训美国和亚美尼亚的研究生掌握先进的考古数据收集、记录、取样和遥感技术。从拟议的挖掘材料将为2012年埃里温博物馆和2013年东方学院（芝加哥）计划的展览提供基础。项目工作人员还将继续定期在taghkahovit平原当地学校讲授其活动。

Funding from the National Science Foundation will underwrite two years of archaeological research by Drs. Adam T. Smith (University of Chicago), Ian Lindsay (Purdue University), and Lori Khatchadourian (Cornell University) into the rise of the earliest complex sociopolitical regimes in southern Caucasia during the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1500-1150 BC). The co-PIs will join their long-time collaborator, Dr. Ruben Badalyan (Armenian Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography), and an interdisciplinary team of specialists in faunal and floral analysis, archaeometallurgy, and geochemistry to investigate regionally distinctive approaches to political authority through two seasons of excavations at the fortress sites of Gegharot and Tsaghkahovit in central Armenia. Traditional models of the rise of political complexity, built around archetypal centers such as Mesopotamia and the Maya lowlands, typically describe the origins of archaic states as the result of a gradual coalescence of settled agricultural communities, the surpluses from which fueled emerging political economies. In southern Caucasia, our research to date has revealed a different course of political coalescence during the mid-2nd millennium BC, when complex polities emerged not from settled farming villages but from nomadic, hierarchical pastoral groups.Prior excavations at the fortresses of Gegharot and Tsaghkahovit have uncovered tantalizing evidence of emergent political formation manifested in architecturally discrete areas for elite institutions. Most intriguingly, cultic buildings at Gegharot, complete with altar and ritual equipment (such as censors), revealed evidence of storage and metalworking, suggesting well-integrated political, economic, and ritual institutions. At the other end of the social spectrum, test excavations and a pilot magnetometry survey at the base of the Tsaghkahovit fortress have provided the first documented accounts of a Late Bronze Age residential complex; significantly, however, the informality of the domestic architecture, combined with relatively thin, single-floor occupation layers, hints that the settlement may not have been as enduring as the fortresses that oversaw them, possibly a result of seasonal occupation by transhumant pastoralists. Our research seeks to understand the internal factors through which solidarity was maintained as sedentary political institutions faced the prospect of legitimizing their right to rule over subject populations seeking to maintain their historical legacy of mobility. Through continued detailed excavations and geophysical survey, our goal is to develop a detailed model of the practices that bound the region into a coherent socio-political order by charting the formation, operation, and ultimate collapse of Late Bronze Age regimes at the intersection of the fortress and the grassroots.The resulting data will impact broader debates that center on the formation of complex socio-political regimes, the constitution of subject communities, and the inter-digitation of settled institutions and nomadic pastoralists. The project will also train American and Armenian graduate students in advanced archaeological data collection, recording, sampling, and remote sensing techniques. Materials from the proposed excavations will provide the foundation for exhibits planned for the Yerevan Museum in 2012 and the Oriental Institute (Chicago) in 2013. Project staff will also continue to offer periodic lectures on its activities in the local schools of the Tsaghkahovit plain.