ON SALT, COPPER AND GOLD: THE ORIGINS OF EARLY MINING IN THE CAUCASUS

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This project is a development of previous investigations carried out respectively in Azerbaijan, on the salt mine of Duzdagi and the settlement of Ovçular Tepesi, and in Georgia, on the gold mines and related landscape of Sakdrissi/Dzedzvebi. Our research programme will take place in two regions: 1) the Naxçivançay valley in Azerbaijan (Nakhchivan); 2) the Mashavera valley in Georgia. Our work will concentrate on the early mining and associated mining economy of salt and gold, but also copper, since major copper mines (Misdagi) are attested in Nakhchivan in the vicinity of the Duzdagi, together with several Late Prehistoric settlements.The main objectives of this project will be to study the conditions (social, economic, technological, environmental) that presided over the development of early mining in the Caucasus (salt, copper and gold), with a special focus on the reasons why early mining was so intimately linked to the Kuro-Araxes cultural complex. Our goal is to complete the information so far retrieved from the mines themselves (Duzdagi and Sakdrissi) by data to be obtained from the mining settlements (Kültepe I and Dzedzvebi), especially as concerns technology, socio-economic structures and subsistence strategies. In Nakhchivan, work on early mining and the mining economy will be extended to the copper mines of Misdagi and the coppersmith settlement of Zirinçlik. In both Georgia and Azerbaijan, archaeological excavations and surveys will be associated with specific environmental studies in order to complete our data on subsistence strategies. Another aim of these studies will be to reconstruct the environmental setting in which these new technologies (mining, metallurgy) developed. Isotope analyses carried on animal teeth (caprines) will also help to assess the nature of pastoral herding (local/long-distance) and provide indirect clues to the intensity of interregional exchange (goods, animals, people). The extension of the mining economy, as well as the impact of new technologies upon surrounding regions, will also be studied through provenance studies on gold and copper artefacts from Caucasian sites (Ovçular Tepesi, Kültepe I, Zirinçlik, Dzedzvebi, Soyuk Bulaq, Sioni) but also from Eastern Anatolia (Arslantepe) and Northwestern Iran.