With the support of the National Science Foundation, Dr. Adam T. Smith (Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago) will conduct a two-year investigation into the rise of early complex societies in the South Caucasus during the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1500-1200 B.C.). Working in collaboration with Drs. Ruben Badalyan and Pavel Avetisyan (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Yerevan), this project will conduct intensive excavations at the fortress of Gegharot, located in the Tsakahovit plain of central Armenia. Preserved by a cataclysmic fire that marked the end of the site's occupation, Gegharot offers a unique perspective on the social transformations that gripped the Caucasus during the second half of the 2nd millennium B.C. At this time, a martial form of mobile pastoralism rapidly gave way to territorial polities administered from stone-walled fortresses.
The drama of this historical moment lies in its opposition to long-held archaeological models of how archaic states form. Archaeologists have traditionally used architecture as a shorthand for major socio-political institutions. Temple, palace, and marketplace regularly stand in for discrete religious, political, and economic spheres of administration and authority. This distinction has served relatively well in places such as southern Mesopotamia, where such institutions appear to have emerged as discrete, authoritative locations by the early 3rd millennium B.C. However, in many other parts of the world, institutional divisions do not appear to have been so neatly codified. Excavations in 2003 at Gegharot, located in the Tsakahovit Plain of central Armenia, uncovered tantalizing evidence of incipient institutional formation in the form of architecturally discrete areas for elite residence and cultic practice. But the activities of these institutions do not seem to segment along traditional lines. Most intriguingly, a partially excavated cultic building, complete with altar and ritual equipment (such as censors), also revealed evidence of storage and metalworking. How can archaeology understand the formation of institutions in early complex societies when the existing categories fail to adequately express the social practices that produced and legitimated institutions of rule and administration?
Rather than developing slowly from settled agrarian villages, complex societies emerged rapidly in the South Caucasus out of centuries of mobile pastoralism. The goal of this research is to identify the forces that drove this counterintuitive historical development through an examination of the institutions that emerged, the practical routines that embedded them within Late Bronze Age society, and the sources of their power and legitimacy.
Having completed a systematic regional survey in the Tsakahovit Plain in 2000 and test excavations at the region's major fortress sites in 2002 and 2003, the proposed research will provide the most detailed picture available of life and socio-political organization at the dawn of social complexity in Caucasia. The Caucasus remain an exciting new frontier in world archaeology. Thanks to the support of the National Science Foundation, this research will not only advance our understanding of the emergence of social complexity, but also advance the productive engagement of American and Armenian archaeologists, allowing us to augment the methodological and interpretive tools of both scholarly traditions.
