Diversity and landscape have been persistent themes in the history and archaeology of the Caucasus. From Burney and Lang (Reference Burney and Lang1971) to Smith (Reference Smith2003) and Sagona (Reference Sagona and Sagona2004), the South Caucasus has frequently been defined by its place between the steppes of Russia and the sown fields of Mesopotamia. It is alternatively envisioned as difficult to penetrate, both militarily and conceptually, and yet seated at the crossroads of empires, thriving as a meeting place and passageway. The diversity of cultural development in this region is highlighted by its description as a mountain of tongues, and its history of violent contestation over national borders and ethnic identity. Anthropological and historical research in the Caucasus has long looked to these mountains as a forceful formative power in the lives of their occupants, the environment and geography forming a determinative background for cultural and historical narratives. Landscape archaeology sees environment and culture as interactive; human activity is shaped by landscapes, but also shapes these landscapes in turn. Smith (Reference Smith2003) has argued, for example, that the shaping of both the physical landscape and perceptions of it was instrumental in the establishment of authority in early complex polities.
The volume reviewed here reflects the young face of archaeology in the South Caucasus—Georgia and Armenia, in particular—and represents some of the best of contemporary archaeological investigation in the region. Many of the contributors are the international participants in archaeological projects that are concerned with the emplacement of past sites within cultural, historical, and environmental landscapes. Others represent the forefront of an emerging local tradition of landscape archaeology, based increasingly on intensive surface survey. This volume illustrates the diversity of methodological approaches, temporal foci, and overarching questions brought to bear on the archaeology of the South Caucasus. The volume developed out of a workshop of the same name at the 2016 ICAANE (International Congresses on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East) meeting in Vienna; the composition of both the publication and the workshop reflects the variability of traditions in the archaeology of the South Caucasus. It is promising that most of the papers reflect this variation in a synthetic way, integrating legacy data sets, multiple methodologies, and a reflexive approach to their production of new data. These authors have salvaged several babies from the proverbial bath water and dressed them in contemporary garb. The result is a selection of chapters that highlight the work in progress, offer models for future research, and present generally useful analyses that can be widely applied to other times and places. The relative paucity of Azerbaijani material, in contrast to Armenia and Georgia, is regrettable and highlights the work that remains to be done in bringing together the fragmented practices of archaeology from the total range of the South Caucasus, to which the editors draw attention in their introduction.
Several chapters reflect an effort to employ legacy data in dynamic ways: putting them into conversation with original research or new survey results. In the process of attempting to identify the ancient city of Phasis, Davit Naskidashvili brings together legacy data, transect surface survey, and remote sensing in ‘Phasis and its Landscape: Preliminary Report of the Archaeological Survey of the Lower Stream of the Rioni River Delta’ (Ch. 7). This approach to landscape incorporates multiple phenomena, from obsolete water channels to current environmental conditions to a close reading of historical texts; this combination challenges a simple reading of classical sources. The suggestion is intriguing: that Greek authors read the local site of Phasis through their own cultural lens, while Naskidashvili seeks unique characteristics of an indigenous population centre, shaped by adaptation to the local landscape. Meanwhile, Abby Robinson and Giorgi Khaburzania approach a fascinating category of site in ‘Medieval Underground Shelters (Darnebi) of South-west Georgia’ (Ch. 9). As sites of ephemeral occupation, with material culture left behind at only a few sites, darnebi present an archaeological challenge, for both chronology and cultural interpretation. The authors demonstrate the utility of not only a range of methodological approaches (observer-reported and pedestrian survey, as well as the use of legacy data), but also the importance and value of reflexive incorporation of the lessons learned from previous seasons. They also bring together textual analysis, architectural parallels, ceramic typology, and historical circumstance in their attempts to establish a terminus post quem. The evidence is stronger for a later date, but—as the authors point out—there is nothing to exclude the earlier date of the eighth century ad for which they advocate.
In ‘Approaching Landscapes of Infrastructure: Methods and Results of the Vayots Dzor Silk Road Survey’ (Ch. 10), Kathryn Franklin and Astghik Babajanyan use multiple methods in combination, enriching an Armenian source of legacy data with survey approaches less commonly used in historical archaeology. They also raise the issue of the impact of Soviet place-making on our ability to conceptualize archaeological landscapes, an issue that Paul Wordsworth addresses explicitly in ‘Approaches to Understanding Provincial Structure in the Early Islamic Caucasus: Historic Landscape Characterization in the Kura Plain’ (Ch. 11). This is an omnipresent challenge of landscape archaeology in the South Caucasus, which others often avoid addressing. Landscape archaeologists in the region must seriously grapple with the historical and ongoing impact of these Soviet projects. Wordsworth also brings together multiple methods, from analysis of the documentary record—including early Arabic geographies and administrative records—to satellite imagery and intensive surface survey. Both the methods applied and the questions raised are equally valuable contributions to landscape archaeology in the region.
Other chapters take a fresh eye to the distribution of sites and artefacts in relation to regional physical and cultural landscapes. Nathaniel Erb-Satullo attends to questions of movement and site location in ‘Patterns of Settlement and Metallurgy in Late Bronze-Early Iron Age Kvemo Kartli, Southern Georgia’ (Ch. 3). The sites described in this chapter may have been as concerned with controlling paths as what those paths accessed. A focus on the way sites constrain movement, rather than facilitate interaction, puts a twist in typical approaches to landscape and regional interaction, but one that may be better suited to the archaeological context of the Late Bronze Age in the South Caucasus. In ‘Moving in the Mountains: GIS and Mapping the Phenomenology of Travel through the South Caucasus’ (Ch. 2), Lara Fabian has developed a cumulative cost path (CCP) map for the South Caucasus, using least-cost paths to highlight likely patterns of movement. The most important contribution here is the application of a growing awareness that mountains, rather than barriers to movement, were more likely corridors. This is a contextually considered application of GIS technologies—with a nod to historical written sources and archaeological data. Much more could be said about the temporal variability of the placement of sites relative to these paths of movement, but as an introduction to the approach, and as a preliminary assessment of its results, the chapter offers something new to our understanding of large-scale patterns of movement in the South Caucasus. What is more, it approaches the South Caucasus in their entirety: something many projects aim to do, but few accomplish.
Taking a fresh look at the relationship between agricultural fields and archaeological remains, William Anderson and Michelle Negus Cleary consider the sherds recovered from intensive field walking as indicative of prehistoric manuring practices in ‘Prehistory from the Ploughsoil: Interpreting Artefact Distributions from Intensive Survey in the Highlands of Samtskhe-Javakheti, Southern Georgia’ (Ch. 6). Such an approach suggests the possibility that land use, and its changes over time, can be identified by the dispersal of ceramic and lithic remains from settlement sites, over the agricultural fields that surrounded them. This observation challenges both the assumptions made about the nature of survey assemblages and the relationship between sites and the landscape. In the case of Samtskhe-Javakheti, other archaeological data support the interpretation of long-term local exploitation of agricultural fields. One wonders whether, or how, this approach could be utilized in a less thoroughly investigated archaeological landscape; the noise of sherd scatters arising from manuring practices is a potentially confounding force. However, this chapter demonstrates the powerful value of a landscape approach to archaeology, in which the background of site location, temporal relationships, and patterns of land use are brought together to interpret data from both excavation and surface survey.
Finally, several chapters represent solid archaeological contributions, but seem oddly placed in a volume focussed on landscape archaeology. Manuel Castelluccia offers a narrative catalogue of sites in the Hrazdan River Basin of Armenia, in ‘The Archaeological Landscape of the Hrazdan River Basin during the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age’ (Ch. 4). This chapter will certainly be useful to archaeologists working with the sites described, especially as it integrates legacy data and remote sensing. However, the chapter is almost purely descriptive. Though the geography is described, little work is done to connect the sites described, or place them in the geographic, or cultural, landscape. The nod to interpretations of the socio-political conditions of the Late Bronze Age at the close of the paper could be more explicitly tied to the preceding material. David Berikshvili's Chapter 8, ‘Samshvilde: Multidisciplinary Approaches to a Historical City of Transcaucasia’, is a decent field report, describing progress made in the excavation and mapping of multiple periods of use at the site of Samshvilde. However, its place in this volume is less than clear. It does not connect the site to the local surrounding landscape or the broader regional landscape, either in literal (geographic or environmental) or interpretive (sociocultural) terms. This chapter is valuable to archaeologists with a range of specializations, but is of less relevance to landscape archaeology. Finally, Ayhan Yardimciel, Mehmet Ali Özdemir, and Mehmet Işıklı develop a theoretically robust survey strategy, sensitive to the variability of geographic and political conditions of landscape, in ‘A Survey Project on the Borderlands of Turkey – Armenia – Nakhchivan – North-western Iran: Preliminary Report of the 2014–2016 Surveys on the Middle Araxes Basin’ (Ch. 5). They also present the results of their research in the form of a catalogue, rather than offering an interpretation of these results, though this is to be expected from a preliminary report of this kind. The authors describe not only the characteristics of the sites found, but also their anthropogenic condition and environmental context.
As a whole, this volume suggests that current archaeological approaches to understanding past landscapes in the South Caucasus are deploying new methods sensitively, alongside a critical reading of historical sources and the aid of legacy data, when available and appropriate. Offering case studies for a variety of research questions, it is a useful text for both regional specialists and landscape archaeologists working elsewhere in the world. As such, it offers a practical introduction to these new methods, as well as—in total—an overview of the kinds of questions and projects that characterize contemporary landscape archaeology in the South Caucasus.
