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

西南亚在铜石时代晚期以其重心的逐渐转移为标志：大约有一段时间。在公元前5 - 4千年，经济变化的动力似乎从新月沃地转移到高加索轨道，新月沃地在新石器时代发展了许多与生存策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不断增加，例如采矿（铜、黑曜石）或提炼冶金，但陶器生产也发生了变化：南高加索地区成为吸引居住在伊朗、美索不达米亚及其他地区的人类群体的主要来源;因此发展成为在城市文明（乌鲁克情结）曙光中逐步塑造西南亚洲的动态的重要组成部分。因此，高加索文化景观，特别是其南部的组成部分，在那个时期以其定居模式和仪式模式的复杂性为特征，这可能不是巧合。ANR-DFG项目“矿山”最近进行的研究表明，到公元前5千年末和公元4千年初，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。其中一些群体掌握了复杂的烟火技术，如冶金术，同时通过在小高加索山坡上定居而偏爱特定的生物群落。逐步占领毗邻广阔肥沃的库拉和阿拉克斯山谷的山区腹地，无疑标志着土地勘探的新发展，这可能是由于复杂的动态，加上长途畜牧业的兴起、新的经济网络和寻找金属矿石。作为回报，经济重组和新产品的生产可能是在青铜时代初期推动库拉-阿拉克斯部落向安纳托利亚东部和伊朗西南部迁移的力量。我们的第一个目标是描述和评估南高加索地区公元前4千年在技术知识、生存战略、基因库和人类饮食范围方面可感知的人类多样性。我们的第二个目标是描述和评估公元前5世纪和公元前3世纪中期之间的变化。高加索地区在采矿、提炼冶金等领域的技术创新，以及羊毛织物和奶制品的出现，与流动性的增加、多元文化主义和初期的社会不平等是同时代的。这项研究的目的是整合与这些不同领域有关的数据，以揭示高加索地区从新石器时代的文化死水转变为铜器时代晚期经济热点的可能情况，然后在第三个千年开始时由于未知的原因退出。

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.