Badalyan R., Harutyunyan A. Excavations of the Early Bronze Age layer at Gegharot settlement (2013 - 2015

Badalyan Ruben, Harutyunyan Armine Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography (Armenia, Yerevan)

Excavations of the Early Bronze Age layer at Gegharot settlement (2013 - 2015).

Abstract

This report presents the main results of investigation of the Early Bronze Age layer at Gegharot settlement in 2013-2015. A complex of three-sectioned rectangular stone buildings with a total area of about 26 m2 was opened at the trench T-30 on the western edge of the hill. The discovered materials - a large number of grains, sickle blades, about 20 ground stones and grinders - suggest that its inhabitants were primarily engaged in processing various cereals. The scale of the activities carried out in the complex was more (sub)communal than familial. Perhaps the complex played a special role in the social life of the settlement. While it is clear that grain storage and processing took place at the site, it is likely that grain distribution occurred as well.

Based on materials from Gegharot we can identify a pronounced agricultural character of Kura-Araxes settlements, namely KA I, situated at an altitude of about 2100 m above sea level.

The stratigraphic situation in the trench T-30 and in the settlement as a whole demonstrates the discrete nature of the Kura-Araxes layer and the absence of a genetic link between early and late EB settlements of Gegharot. Perhaps the hiatus between the two EB horizons reflects not only the particular situation and history of a specific site, but also more extensive historical and cultural processes: the fragmentation of the relatively homogeneous early Kura-Araxes (EB I) and its replacement with mosaics of local variants of the late Kura-Araxes (EB II).

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