From Kura-Araxes to Early Kurgans. Tracing 3rd millennium social and cultural changes in the Kura river valley (Georgia and Azerbaijan). Environment, food, chronology.

从库拉-阿拉克斯到早期库尔干人。

• 批准号: 449507523
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Svend Hansen
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Laboratoire Archéorient (UMR 5133)
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/449507523?language=en
• 关键词: Kura; Araxes; Early; Kurgans.; Tracing

The KUR(A)GAN project aims at investigating the radical changes in social orders, economy, cultural values and lifestyles during the third millennium BCE in South Caucasus. Over a short period of time, the stability of a non-hierarchal societal model was shuttered and replaced by a completely different type of society (so-called Early Kurgan) featuring sharp vertical social differences, organised along high-ranking chiefs and founded on display and accumulation of metals. The so-called "Kura Araxes Culture", which developed systematically in South Caucasus as early as 3400 BCE, centered on the household and horizontal kinship relations and featuring an egalitarian social ideology represented for almost one millennium the socio-cultural expression of small-scale sedentary societies of the Caucasian highlands. Why did the Kura Araxes communities and socio-cultural system disappeared around 2600 BCE and were replaced by hierarchized communities featuring a mobile lifestyle and different cultural traditions, among which the new burial custom of the funerary tumuli (Kurgans)? To answer this question and account for an all-encompassing "systemic" change that disrupted the South Caucasian social trajectories, we propose an interdisciplinary project based on a multiscalar approach combing field (settlements and kurgans excavations) and laboratory activities (archaeozoology, archaeobotany, pollen, isotopic analyses). This data aim at characterising and comparing Kura-Araxes and Early Kurgan societies in terms of subsistence strategies, diets, economy ,cultural practices and lifestyles and at producing new palaeonevironmental and palaeoclimatic data to investigate the role of environmental and climatic evolutions in these radical transformations. One of the key and innovative issues of our research is the establishment, for the first time in South Caucasus, of an independent climate curve for the 3rd millennium BCE thanks to the perfect wood conservation of numerous Kurgans that will be the object of specific dendroclimatological research. A large series of AMS-14C analyses from old and new excavations, coupled with dendrochronological dates, will construct a new robust and refined third-millennium chronology. The geographical focus of this research lies in Georgia and Azerbaijan where the German-French research group will collaborate with local colleagues. The Kura River Valley bridging these two countries, serves as the backbone connecting ecologically diverse areas in which the sites of interest are located. Starting from the lowland sites of Tsikhia Gora and Doghlauri, Hasansu and Uzun Rama, the project will unfold along the Alazani and the Qaraçay rivers where kurgans and the site of Qaraçinar will be investigated. Finally, research in the Tsalka plateau in Georgia, where both excavations of kurgans and environmental investigations will be carried out, will complement information from the highland regions.

KUR(A)GAN项目旨在调查公元前第三个千年南高加索地区社会秩序、经济、文化价值和生活方式的根本变化。在很短的一段时间内，稳定的无等级社会模式被关闭，取而代之的是一种完全不同的社会类型（所谓的早期库尔干），其特征是尖锐的垂直社会差异，由高级酋长组织，建立在展示和积累金属的基础上。早在公元前3400年，所谓的“库拉阿拉克斯文化”就在南高加索有系统地发展起来，以家庭和横向亲属关系为中心，以平等主义的社会意识形态为特色，代表了高加索高地小规模定居社会近一千年的社会文化表现。为什么库拉阿拉克斯社区和社会文化系统在公元前2600年左右消失，取而代之的是具有流动生活方式和不同文化传统的等级社区，其中包括殡葬坟（kurgan）的新埋葬习俗？为了回答这个问题，并解释破坏南高加索社会轨迹的全方位“系统性”变化，我们提出了一个跨学科项目，该项目基于多标量方法，结合田野（定居点和库尔干人的挖掘）和实验室活动（考古、考古植物学、花粉、同位素分析）。这些数据旨在描述和比较库拉-阿拉克斯和早期库尔干社会在生存策略、饮食、经济、文化习俗和生活方式方面的特征，并产生新的古环境和古气候数据，以调查环境和气候演变在这些激进转变中的作用。我们研究的关键和创新问题之一是在南高加索首次建立了公元前3千年的独立气候曲线，这要归功于许多库尔干人的完美木材保存，这将成为特定树木气候学研究的对象。来自新旧发掘的大量AMS-14C分析，加上树木年代学日期，将构建一个新的、可靠的、精细的第三千年年代学。这项研究的地理重点在格鲁吉亚和阿塞拜疆，德国-法国研究小组将与当地同事合作。库拉河谷连接着这两个国家，是连接生态多样性地区的主干，这些地区都是感兴趣的地点。从Tsikhia Gora和Doghlauri、Hasansu和Uzun Rama的低地地点开始，该项目将沿着Alazani和qara<s:1>河展开，在那里将调查kurgans和qara<s:1>河遗址。最后，在格鲁吉亚的Tsalka高原进行的研究将补充高地地区的资料，在那里将进行kurgan的发掘和环境调查。