Archaeology in the Borderlands: Investigations in Caucasia and Beyond


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Series: Monographs 47
ISBN: 978-1-931745-01-7
Publication Date: Feb 2004
Price: Pb $14.95
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Adam T. Smith and Karen S. Rubinson

Set on a broad isthmus between the Black and Caspian Seas, Caucasia has traditionally been portrayed as either a well-trod highway linking southwest Asia and the Eurasian Steppe or an isolated periphery of the political and cultural centers of the ancient world. Archaeology in the Borderlands: Investigations in Caucasia and Beyond critically re-examines traditional archaeological work in the region, assembling accounts of recent investigations by an international group of scholars from the Caucasus, its neighbors, Europe, and the United States. The twelve chapters in this book address the ways archaeologists must re-conceptualize the region within our larger historical and anthropological frameworks of thought, presenting critical new materials from the Neolithic period through the Iron Age. Challenging traditional models of economic, political, cultural, and social marginality that read the past through Cold War geographies, Archaeology in the Borderlands provides a new challenge to long dominant interpretations of the pre-, proto-, and early history of Eurasia, opening new possibilities for understanding a region that is critical to regional order in the post-Soviet era. This collection represents the first attempt to grapple with the problems and possibilities for archaeology in the Caucasus and its neighboring regions sparked by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of independent states.
Table of Contents
  • Introduction: Archaeology in the Borderlands by Karen S. Rubinson and Adam Smith 
  • Ch. 01: Integrated Interaction at the Beginning of the Bronze Age: New Evidence from the Northeast Caucasus and the Advent of Tin-Bronzes in the Third Millennium BC by Philip L. Kohl 
  • Ch. 02: Ancient Metallurgy in the Mountain Kingdom: The Technology and Value of Early Bronze Age Metalwork from Velikent, Dagestan by David L. Peterson
  •  Ch. 03: On the Origins of the Kura-Araxes Cultural Complex by Tamaz Kiguradze and Antonio Sagona
  • Ch. 04: Ripples in the Stream: Transcaucasia-Anatolian Interaction in the Murat/Euphrates Basin at the Beginning of the Third Millennium BC by Mitchell S. Rothman
  • Ch. 05: Social and Economic Shifts in the South Caucasian Middle Bronze Age by Marina Puturidze 
  • Ch. 06: Silver Vessels and Cylinder Sealings: Precious Reflections of Economic Exchange in the Early Second Millennium BC by Karen S. Rubinson
  • Ch. 07: The Emergence of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Caucasus: An Interim Report on the Research of Project ArAGATS by Ruben S. Badalyan, Adam T. Smith, and Pavel S. Avetisyan
  • Ch. 08: Pre-Urartian and Urartian Settlement Patterns in the Caucasia, Two Case Studies: The Urmia Plain, Iran, and the Sevan Basin, Armenia by Raffaele Biscione
  • Ch. 09: The Early Iron Age in the Van Region by Veli Sevin
  • Ch. 10: Recent Excavations at the Urartian Fortress of Ayanis by Altan Çilingiroğlu
  • Ch. 11: The Utartian Transformation in the Outer Town of Ayanis by Elizabeth C. Stone and Paul Zimansky
  • Ch. 12: The Culture of Ancient Georgia in the First Millennium BC and Great Anatolia: Diffusion or Migration? by Gocha R. Tsetskhladze