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

KUR（A）GAN项目旨在调查南高加索地区公元前第三个千年期间社会秩序、经济、文化价值观和生活方式的根本变化。在很短的时间内，非等级社会模式的稳定性被关闭，取而代之的是一个完全不同类型的社会（所谓的早期库尔干），其特点是明显的垂直社会差异，沿着高级酋长组织起来，并建立在金属的展示和积累上。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，代表了近一千年来高加索高地小规模定居社会的社会文化表达。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，取而代之的是以移动的生活方式和不同文化传统为特征的等级化社区，其中包括新的墓葬习俗（库尔干人）？为了回答这个问题，并占一个包罗万象的“系统性”的变化，破坏了南高加索的社会轨迹，我们提出了一个跨学科的项目，基于多标量的方法结合领域（定居点和kkoreans发掘）和实验室活动（考古动物学，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的生存策略，饮食，经济，文化习俗和生活方式，并在生产新的古生物和古气候数据，以调查环境和气候演变在这些根本性的转变中的作用。我们研究的关键和创新问题之一是在南高加索首次建立公元前3000年的独立气候曲线，这要归功于众多库尔干人的完美木材保护，这将成为特定树木气候学研究的对象。一个大系列的AMS-14 C分析，从旧的和新的挖掘，再加上树木年代学的日期，将构建一个新的强大和完善的第三个千年年表。这项研究的地理重点在于格鲁吉亚和阿塞拜疆，德法研究小组将与当地同事合作。连接这两个国家的库拉河谷是连接感兴趣地点所在的生态多样性地区的主干线。该项目将从Tsikhia戈拉和Doghlauri、Hasansu和Uzun拉马等低地地点开始，沿沿着Alazani河和Qaraçay河展开，在那里将对krisans和Qaraçinar地点进行调查。最后，在格鲁吉亚的察尔卡高原进行的研究将对高原地区的资料进行补充，在那里将进行克孜勒人的发掘和环境调查。

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.