Wandering the highlands and valleys: Social and economic practices between the Late Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age in the Transcaucasus

西南亚在侏罗纪晚期的特点是重心逐渐转移：大约在公元前5-4千年的一段时间，经济变化的动力似乎从肥沃的新月地带转移到高加索轨道，那里在新石器时代发展了许多与生存战略和物质产品生产有关的创新。高加索地区本身的技术进步有所提高，如采矿(铜、黑铁矿)或提取冶金，但陶器生产也发生了变化：南高加索地区成为生活在伊朗、美索不达米亚和其他地区的人类群体的主要吸引力来源；因此，南高加索地区发展成为在城市文明之初逐渐形成亚洲西南部的动态的重要组成部分(乌鲁克情结)。因此，高加索文化景观，特别是其南部部分，在那个时期具有复杂的聚落模式和仪式模式，这可能不是巧合。ANR-DFG项目“Mines”最近进行的研究表明，在公元前五千年末和四千年初，属于不同文化背景的几个社区，包括前库拉-阿拉克斯群体，实际上在阿拉克斯和库拉盆地共存。这些人中的一些人掌握了精细的烟火技术，如冶金学，同时通过在较小的高加索山坡上定居而偏爱特定的生物栖息地。对与广阔而肥沃的库拉和阿拉塞斯山谷接壤的山区腹地的逐步占领，无疑标志着土地勘探的新发展，这可能是复杂的动态因素导致的，结合了长途牧业的崛起、新的经济网络和金属矿藏的寻找。反过来，经济重组和新商品的生产可能是推动库拉-阿拉克斯集团在青铜时代早期向东安纳托利亚和伊朗西南部发展的力量。我们的第一个目标是从技术诀窍、生存策略、基因库和人类饮食范围等方面描述和评估整个南高加索地区公元前4千年可以察觉到的人类多样性。我们的第二个目标是描述和评估公元前五千年到三千年中期之间的变化。高加索地区在采矿、提炼冶金等领域的技术创新，也可能是羊毛织物和乳制品的出现，与流动性的提高、多元文化主义和初期的社会不平等处于同一时期。这项研究的目的是整合与这些不同领域有关的数据，以揭开高加索从新石器时代的文化死水变成晚期高加索经济热点的可能情景，然后高加索地区在公元3世纪初因未知的原因退出。

South-west Asia is marked during the Late Chalcolithic period by a progressive shift in its centre of gravity: some time ca. the 5th- 4th millennia BC, the dynamics of economic change appear to move from the Fertile Crescent, where many innovations relating to subsistence strategies and the production of material goods had developed during the Neolithic, to the Caucasian orbit. There was a rise of technical advances in the Caucasus itself, such as mining (copper, obsidian) or extractive metallurgy but also a change in pottery production: The Southern Caucasus became a major source of attraction for human groups living in Iran, Mesopotamia and beyond; hence developing into an important component in the dynamics that progressively shaped SW Asia at the dawn of urban civilization (Uruk-complex). It is thus probably no coincidence that the Caucasian cultural landscape, especially its southern component, is marked by the complexity of its settlement pattern and ritual pattern during that time. Research recently carried out by the ANR-DFG-project “Mines” has shown that several communities belonging to distinct cultural backgrounds, and including Pre-Kura-Araxes groups, were actually coexisting in the Araxes and Kura basin by the late 5th millennium BC and the beginning of the 4th millenium. Some of these groups had mastered elaborate pyrotechniques, such as metallurgy, while favouring specific biotopes by settling on the Lesser Caucasus mountain slopes. The progressive occupation of the mountainous hinterland that borders the large and fertile Kura and Araxes valleys certainly marks a new development in land exploration, which could result from complex dynamics, combining the rise of long-distance pastoralism, new economic networks and the search for metal ores. Economic re-organisation and the production of new goods may in return have been the force that propelled Kura- Araxes groups towards eastern Anatolia and south-western Iran at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age. Our first goal is to characterize and evaluate the human diversity perceptible throughout the 4th millennium BC in the south Caucasus in terms of technological know-how, subsistence strategies, the genetic pool, and human dietary scope. Our second aim is to characterize and assess change between the 5th and mid-3rd millennium BC. Technological innovation in the Caucasus in areas such as mining, extractive metallurgy, but also probably in the emergence of woolen fabrics and dairy products, were coeval with rising mobility, multi-culturalism, and incipient social inequalities. This study will aim at integrating the data pertaining to these many different fields, in order to unravel the possible scenarios that turned the Caucasus from a Neolithic cultural backwater into a Late Chalcolithic economic hotspot, before it withdrew into itself at the beginning of the 3rd millennium for reasons that are still unknown.