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

国家科学基金会将资助Adam T.Smith博士(芝加哥大学)、Ian Lindsay博士(普渡大学)和Lori Khatchadourian博士(康奈尔大学)进行为期两年的考古研究，研究青铜时代晚期(约公元前1500-1150)南高加索最早的复杂社会政治制度的兴起。共同PIS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)以及一个由动植物分析、考古冶金和地球化学专家组成的跨学科小组一起，通过对亚美尼亚中部Gegharot和Tsaghkahovit要塞遗址的两个季节的挖掘，研究具有区域特色的政治权威方法。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，通常将古老国家的起源描述为定居的农业社区逐渐融合的结果，盈余推动了新兴政治经济的发展。在南高加索，到目前为止，我们的研究揭示了公元前2000年中期不同的政治融合过程，当时复杂的政治不是来自定居的农业村庄，而是来自游牧、等级森严的牧民群体。在对格格哈罗特和察卡霍维特要塞进行挖掘之前，已经发现了诱人的证据，表明在精英机构的建筑离散地区出现了新兴的政治形成。最耐人寻味的是，Gegharot的邪教建筑，配备了祭坛和仪式设备(如检查器)，揭示了储存和金属加工的证据，表明政治、经济和仪式制度的良好整合。在社会光谱的另一端，在Tsaghkahovit堡垒底部进行的试掘和试点磁力测量为青铜时代晚期的住宅区提供了第一批有文件记录的描述；然而，值得注意的是，国内建筑的非正规性，加上相对较薄的单层居住层，暗示该定居点可能没有监管它们的堡垒那么持久，可能是跨舒曼牧民季节性占领的结果。我们的研究试图了解维持团结的内部因素，因为久居不动的政治机构面临着使其对寻求保持其流动性历史遗产的臣民进行统治的权利合法化的前景。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草根交界处青铜时代晚期政权的形成、运作和最终崩溃的图表，开发一个将该地区限制为连贯的社会政治秩序的实践的详细模型。由此产生的数据将影响围绕复杂社会政治政权的形成、主体社区的构成以及定居机构和游牧民族的相互融合的更广泛的辩论。该项目还将培训美国和亚美尼亚的研究生，学习先进的考古数据收集、记录、采样和遥感技术。拟议挖掘的材料将为计划于2012年在埃里温博物馆和2013年在芝加哥东方研究所展出的材料提供基础。项目工作人员还将继续定期就其在茨加卡霍维特平原当地学校的活动举办讲座。

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 transhuman 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.