ON SALT, COPPER AND GOLD: THE ORIGINS OF EARLY MINING IN THE CAUCASUS
Final Report Abstract
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 and seemingly also in pastoral strategies including Transcaucasian highlands over 1000 masl: 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. Research recently carried out by the French-German ANR/DFG project “Mines” has shown that several communities belonging to distinct cultural backgrounds. 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 and social re-organisation and the production of new goods may in return have been the force that propelled Kura- Araxes groups towards eastern Anatolia and southwestern Iran at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age. Since the project was installed as collaborative project from the beginning, there was a tight connection with the French team under direction of Dr. Catherine Marro. There was participation of French and German scientists at the field work in Georgia and Nakhicevan during 2013 and 2015. Further collaboration was facilitated within the frame of archaeometallurgical investigations. While the French group concentrated on the Arax-valley and samples from Nakhicevan, Dr. Courcier investigated further material from Georgia and Azerbaijan, and from Dzedzvebi-Sakdrisi. Several joint research of several aspects of subsistence (husbandry, agriculture, lithics, metallurgy) have been thus carried out whose results will now be published within the final conference volume “On salt, copper and gold”. A central focus of the German/Georgian field-work was given to the Sakdrisi-Dzedzvebi complex that was discovered and understood in its importance more than 12 years ago. It is an outstanding matter of fact that mining, metallurgy, the settlement and societal structures are related to each other as contemporary features: this allows various approaches to understand a gold mining society of the late 4th millennium BC. The entire production evidence belongs to the Kura-Araxes-cultural unit and it had been explored by a detailed approach of field- and laboratory work between 2013 and 2016. The production-chain was furtherly understood in detail – beginning with the mining, the ore-dressing, the ore-milling and the smelting. This worthy evidence also enabled to understand the importance the gold production once had in the daily practice and how this did influence the ritual habits and the social system. One basic aspect is the question if the production of gold was once a permanent or a part time activity. There is some ambiguity for the question if sedentary or mobile groups were involved to the gold production as the settlement evidence leaves some room for speculation how stable the settlement was at the beginning. Husbandry-data and data on the archaeobotanical record provided some insight to this respect. But we could approach this question not only by qualitative aspects but also quantitative ones. The research team approached to this question by a series of experiments and was able to establish a detailed quantative calculation of the production steps (the “Paravani”-calculation). Although first insights could be gained in concern of metal manufacturing and the exchange of raw materials such as ores or lithics on a wider scale at the Kura-valley, there are still more questions than answers. The research team hopes to solve them within a new project within the next years.
Publications
- 2014 «Gold in the Caucasus: New research on gold extraction in the Kura-Araxes Culture of the 4th millennium BC and early 3rd millennium BC. With an appendix of M. Jansen, T. Stöllner, and A. Courcier». In: H. Meller, E. Pernicka, R. Risch (eds.), Metalle der Macht. Tagungen des Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte Halle 11, Halle, pp. 71-110
Stöllner, Th., Craddock, B., Gambaschidze, I., Gogotchuri, G., Hauptmann, A., Hornschuch, A., Klein, F., Löffler, I., Mindiashvili, G., Murvanidze, B., Senczek, S., Schaich, M., Steffens, G., Tamasashvili, K., Timberlake, S.
- «The Gold Mine of Sakdrisi and early Mining and Metallurgy in Transcaucasus and the Kura-Valley System». In: G. Narimanishvili et al. (eds), International Conference: Problems of Early Metal Age Archaeology of Caucasus and Anatolia. Proceedings, November 19-23, 2014, Tiblisi: Mitsignobari LTD, pp. 101-124
Stöllner, Th., Gambashidze,I.
- 2015, «Ceramics of Early Bronze Era from Sakdrisi mine and Dzedzvebi former settlement», Bulletin of the Georgian National Museum 51-B, pp. 6-29 (in Georgian)
Otkhvani, N. Gambashidze, I., Stöllner, T. and Jansen, M.
- «The Beginnings of Social Inequality: Consumer and Producer Perspectives from Transcaucasia in the 4th and the 3rd Millennia BC». In. M. Bartelheim, B. Horeijs, R. Krauss (eds.), Von Baden bis Troia. Ressourcennutzung, Metallurgie und Wissenstransfer. Eine Jubiläumsschrift für Ernst Pernicka. Oriental and European Archaeology Volume 3 (Rahden 2016) 209-234
Stöllner, Th.
- «The Gold of Sakdrisi. Man’s first gold mining enterprise». Veröffentlichungen aus dem DBM Bochum 211 (Bochum/Rahden 2016)
Gambashidze, I., Stöllner, Th.
- 2017, «Archaeometallurgical investigations in Nakhchivan (Azerbaijan): What does the evidence from Late Chalcolithic Ovçular Tepesi tell us about the beginning of extractive metallurgy?», Journal of Field Archaeology 42/6, pp. 530-550
Gailhard, N., Bode, M., Hauptmann, A., V. Bakhshaliyev, Marro, C.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2017.1393287) - «The ritual interplay: gold mining practices in the late 4th and early 3rd millennia BC». In collaboration with I. Gambashidze. With an appendix from T. Skowronek, A. Courcier, Th. Stöllner. In: B.V. Eriksen, A. Abegg-Wigg, R. Bleile, U. Ickerodt (eds.), Interaktion ohne Grenze. Festschrift für Claus von Carnap-Bornheim zum 60. Geburtstag. Schleswig 2017, pp. 119-136
Stöllner, Th
