IronSide
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As there is not enough information on Eupedia about this culture, I decided to open a new thread to discuss it, it is an interesting culture which arose I believe because of an Indo-European incursion in south Caucasus.
I got everything from this book: ''Ancient Europe, 8000 B.C. to A.D. 1000: An Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World''
by Peter I. Bogucki (Editor), Pam J. Crabtree (Editor).
The end of the Early and beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, across most of Caucasia, was marked by the disappearance of the Kura-Araxes archaeological horizon (defined most readily by distinctive black burnished ceramic complexes) and the large scale abandonment of settled village communities. Except for the late-third-millennium B.C. layers from the bedeni sites in southern Georgia, there is little evidence for continuity in Early and Middle Bronze Age occupations, and indeed comparatively few Middle Bronze Age settlements have been documented in Caucasia. as a result, the vast majority of the archaeological record for the Middle Bronze Age comes fro mortuary sites. The tombs and kurgans of Shengavit, Trialeti (old group, a distinctive group of burials within the Trialeti complex), and Martkopi indicate social, cultural, and political transformations were underway during the third quarter of the third millennium B.C.
This shift in settlement patterns across Caucasia during the Early to Middle Bronze transition is traditionally interpreted as evidence of the advent of increasingly nomadic social groups predicated upon pastoral subsistence production. The appearance of ox and horse sacrifices in numerous Middle Bronze I and II attests to the increased prominence of pastoral production and equestrian mobility within these communities. The shifting subsistence economy was also accompanied by fundamental transformations in the social milieu, changes that centred on emerging radical inequality between a martial elite and the remainder of the social body. The rich inventories of Middle Bronze Age kurgans signify a profound departure in social relations from those indicated by the burials of the Kura-Araxes phase. Even more dramatic expression of this inequality are visible in the following Middle Bronze II period, when a great part of highland Caucaisa was enveloped in the Trialeti-Vanadzor horizon, which was most prominently marked by large burial complexes of unprecedented wealth. The monumental construction and rich mortuary goods of tombs from Trialeti, Vanadzor, Karashamb, and Lori Berd as well as the iconography of elite privilege portrayed on the metal vessels from Karashamb and Korukh Tash testify to profound changes in the social orders of Caucaisa and provide the initial indications of emergent socio-political inequality in the region.
I got everything from this book: ''Ancient Europe, 8000 B.C. to A.D. 1000: An Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World''
by Peter I. Bogucki (Editor), Pam J. Crabtree (Editor).
The end of the Early and beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, across most of Caucasia, was marked by the disappearance of the Kura-Araxes archaeological horizon (defined most readily by distinctive black burnished ceramic complexes) and the large scale abandonment of settled village communities. Except for the late-third-millennium B.C. layers from the bedeni sites in southern Georgia, there is little evidence for continuity in Early and Middle Bronze Age occupations, and indeed comparatively few Middle Bronze Age settlements have been documented in Caucasia. as a result, the vast majority of the archaeological record for the Middle Bronze Age comes fro mortuary sites. The tombs and kurgans of Shengavit, Trialeti (old group, a distinctive group of burials within the Trialeti complex), and Martkopi indicate social, cultural, and political transformations were underway during the third quarter of the third millennium B.C.
This shift in settlement patterns across Caucasia during the Early to Middle Bronze transition is traditionally interpreted as evidence of the advent of increasingly nomadic social groups predicated upon pastoral subsistence production. The appearance of ox and horse sacrifices in numerous Middle Bronze I and II attests to the increased prominence of pastoral production and equestrian mobility within these communities. The shifting subsistence economy was also accompanied by fundamental transformations in the social milieu, changes that centred on emerging radical inequality between a martial elite and the remainder of the social body. The rich inventories of Middle Bronze Age kurgans signify a profound departure in social relations from those indicated by the burials of the Kura-Araxes phase. Even more dramatic expression of this inequality are visible in the following Middle Bronze II period, when a great part of highland Caucaisa was enveloped in the Trialeti-Vanadzor horizon, which was most prominently marked by large burial complexes of unprecedented wealth. The monumental construction and rich mortuary goods of tombs from Trialeti, Vanadzor, Karashamb, and Lori Berd as well as the iconography of elite privilege portrayed on the metal vessels from Karashamb and Korukh Tash testify to profound changes in the social orders of Caucaisa and provide the initial indications of emergent socio-political inequality in the region.