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

Archaeological excavations aimed at the discovery of new Kura-Araxes and Early-Kurgans settlements. Architectural studies aimed to the identification of Kura-Araxes and Early-Kurgans building traditions, the functions of the settlements as well as to detect long-term vs short-term occupations. Ceramic studies aimed to distinguish different cultural and technical traditions. 14C datings were aimed to build a new chronological framework for these changes and a new cultural periodisation. Faunal and archaeobotanical aimed to reconstruct and to compare each other agricultural and animal husbandry practices as well as subsistence strategies of Kura-Araxes and Early-Kurgans communities. Isotopic analyses (C, N, O, S) aimed to detect diets and mobility of Kura-Araxes Early-Kurgans individuals as well as of their domestic animals, biomolecular analyses (lipids and acids) to reconstruct their culinary practices. Sedimentological, pollinic and fungal-spores analyses aimed to reconstruct paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic changes as well as changes in the exploitation of land and its resources.

Archaeological excavations at Qaraçinar (Azerbaijan) and at Irmis Rka (Georgia) made it possible to bring to light the daily life of the so-far almost unknown Early-Kurgans communities that appeared in South Caucasus after the still enigmatic disappearance of the Kura-Araxes communities.
Architectural studies highlighted the existence of different construction traditions between Kura-Araxes and Early-Kurgans communities.
Ceramic studies made it possible to systematically analyse the pottery production of an “Early-Kurgans” community and to identify significant technical differences from the Kura-Araxes pottery traditions. These studies also made it possible to identify a technical and morphological evolution of the Early-Kurgans pottery traditions.
Organic residue analyses of the ceramic vessels made it possible to identify the culinary practices of Kura-Araxes and Early-Kurgans community at Qaraçinar. Similarities between the two periods in the large-scale consumption of meat, dairies and wine could be detected.
However, isotopic analyses (C, N) aimed to detect the diets of Kura-Araxes and Early-Kurgans individuals highlight significant differences in the alimentary regimes.
Organic residue analyses, combined with ceramic studies, made it also possible to understand that Red-Black Burnished Ware was preferentially used for the consumption of wine among the Kura-Araxes communities. Functionally specialised ware-groups can also be detected among the Early-Kurgans ceramics, namely as concerns the emergence of a cooking-ware.
Radiocarbon datings made it possible to confirm that the emergence and developments of the Early-Kurgans communities can be placed between 2500 and 1900 BCE. The combination of radiocarbon and ceramic data made it also possible to establish a new cultural periodisation for Azerbaijan during the second half of the third millennium.
Archaeobotanical analyses at the site of Qaraçinar. made it possible to reconstruct and compare each other Kura-Araxes and Early-Kurgans agricultural practices. In both cases they seem based on the production of cereals thus highlighting some form of continuity among the two communities.
Contrariwise, faunal data highlighted a sharp shift in husbandry practices, with Early-Kurgans ones clearly specialised on cattle.
Isotopic analyses of O and C carried out on caprines and cattle from Kura-Araxes and Early-Kurgans occupations highlighted some mobility practices. These data are coherent with those from the lake Tetri Tba in Georgia. This data, based on fungal spores, seem to confirm the pastoral exploitation of the highlands exactly in this period.

The results of the project have been communicated and will be comunicated in the frame of international conferences and workshops as well as in articles in peer-reviewed journals. A monographic book is in preparation and expected for the end of 2025.

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 combining 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.