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

来自国家科学基金会的资金将资助亚当·T·哈登博士进行两年的考古研究。史密斯（芝加哥大学），伊恩林赛（普渡大学），和洛里Khatchadourian（康奈尔大学）到最早的复杂的社会政治政权在南部高加索地区的青铜时代晚期（约1000年）的崛起。公元前1500-1150年）。 共同PI将加入他们的长期合作者Ruben Badalyan博士（亚美尼亚考古学和人种学研究所），以及一个由动物和植物分析，考古学和地球化学专家组成的跨学科团队，通过在亚美尼亚中部Gegharot和Tsaghkahovit堡垒遗址的两个挖掘季节来调查区域独特的政治权威方法。 传统的政治复杂性上升模型是围绕着美索不达米亚和玛雅低地等典型中心建立的，通常将古代国家的起源描述为定居的农业社区逐渐融合的结果，由此产生的盈余推动了新兴的政治经济。在高加索南部，我们迄今为止的研究揭示了公元前2000年中期政治联合的不同过程，当时复杂的政治体制不是从定居的农业村庄而是从游牧的、等级森严的游牧群体中出现的。之前在格加罗特和查格卡霍维特堡垒的发掘发现了引人注目的证据，表明在建筑上离散的地区出现了精英机构的政治形成。 最有趣的是，盖加罗的宗教建筑，配有祭坛和仪式设备（如检查器），显示了储存和金属加工的证据，表明政治，经济和仪式机构融合良好。 在社会光谱的另一端，在Tsaghkahovit堡垒基地进行的测试性挖掘和试点磁力测量调查提供了青铜时代晚期住宅区的第一个记录;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占用层，暗示着定居点可能没有监督他们的堡垒那么持久，这可能是跨部族牧民季节性占据的结果。我们的研究旨在了解内部因素，通过这种因素，当定居的政治机构面临合法化其统治受试者的权利的前景时，团结得以维持，这些受试者寻求维持其历史遗产的流动性。 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青铜时代晚期堡垒和基层政权的形成、运作和最终崩溃的图表，开发一个详细的实践模型，将该地区束缚在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，这些辩论集中在复杂的社会政治政权的形成上，主体社区的组成以及定居机构和游牧牧民的相互融合。 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。 拟议挖掘的材料将为计划于2012年在埃里温博物馆和2013年在东方研究所（芝加哥）举办的展览提供基础。项目工作人员还将继续定期在查赫卡霍维特平原的当地学校举办有关其活动的讲座。

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.