The Emergence of Sociopolitical Complexity in ...

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The Emergence of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Caucasia: An Interim Report on the Research of Project Ar AGATS

RUBEN

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BADALYAN, ADAM T. SMITH, &

PAVEL S. AVETISYAN

n the fifth century AD, the Armenian historian Moses Khorenats'i offered an historical account of the emergence of complex societies in the Armenian Highlands (southern Caucasia and eastern Anatolia; figure 7.1). The template for such political formations, he posited, was imported to the region when Queen Semiramis of Assyria conquered the plain of Van, erecting a stone-walled fortress to rule the land, a great canal to irrigate it, and inscribed stone markers to delineate its boundaries.

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the bnd of Armenia she set up stelae and ordered memorials to herself to be written on them .... And in many places she fixed the boundaries [of the kingdom] with the same writing. [Khorenats'i 1978: I.l6]

Although epigraphic research in the late nineteenth century demonstrated that Van (and numerous other fortresses strewn across the region) were built by the kings of Biainili (a polity known to the Assyrians as Urartu) not by Semiramis, Khorenats'i's suggestion that the critical stimuli to social complexity in the Armenian Highlands lay somewhere beyond its peaks and v;llleys has proven remarkably enduring. Even as cultural diffusionist approaches to emergent complex societies fell into disfavor under neo-evolutionist
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Caucasia from a question of locating the external stimuli to complexity to one of assessing the processes of social differentiation and institutional formation of which the kingdom of U rartu was an integral part, rather than a radical divergence. CONCLL'SION: FRA.'n~G COMPLEXITY IN SOUTHER.~ CAUCASL-\

The problem of emergent sociopolitical complexity in the Highlands is exceedingly important to the general study of western Asian cultural and political history for at least three reasons. First, Caucasia and the highlands provide not just a road between the Near East and the Eurasian steppe but also a point of cultural articulation that provides a critical archaeological setting for examining the constitution of sociopolitical boundaries and the endurance of long-distance economic ties. Second, early complex societies in Caucasia bear very little resemblance to those of either southern or northern Mesopotamia, suggesting that the region could provide the outlines of a complementary, yet unique, tradition of sociopolitical formation that would enrich our understanding of cultural transformations in western Asia. Third, the unique nature of the enduring economic contacts between highland polities and their neighbors-extensive and intensive exchange without direct political rule-offers an opportunity to examine sets of social relationships within ecumenes bound together less by rigid orders of dominance and exploitation than by shifting patterns of authority and reciprocity. By examining early complex societies in southern Caucasia in their own right, rather than as pale reflections of neighboring ways of life, we not only attain a less reductive understanding of sociocultural djl1amics within the "borderlands" but also open new possibilities for defining transfonnations in adjacent areas that arise from the dynamic interdigitation of differing approaches to social life.

NOTES 1. Diakonoff (198-+:4-1) has cogently argued th:lt Hittite,

Assyrian, and Urartian sources rarely mention "tribes" in the highlands-a term that has been read, inadvisably, as equivalent with the neo-evolutionary social type describing geographically dispersed groups united by kin and ethniciry. Diakonoff suggests instead that these sources describe the region as organized into "countries" each with at least one major town.

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2. \Vbile Assyria is generally the prime mover implicated in Urartian political formation, a number of other polities along the margins of the Highlands have also been cited as possible "inspirations" to imperial coalescence, including Mitanni and Mannaea (Burney and Lang 1972: 126). 3. Accession dates for Assyrian kings before 1132 BC are those suggested by Harper et a!. (1995). Dates for kings following 1132 BC, beginning with Ashur-resh-ishi I, have been taken from Curtis and Reade (1995). Spellings of Assyrian names have also been taken from these sources. 4. For complete accounts of references to Uruatri and Nairi in Assyrian inscriptions see Melikishvili (1954), Salvini (1967), and Wartke (1993). 5. \Ve understand the monumental constructions to be fixed in levels VIII-\tl with three construction stages (EB III B-C). According to Hauptmann, in the EB IIB level of Nor~untepe the "Karaz-Kirbet Kerak" pottery (Schwarzpolierte Keramik) comprises 50% of the total material. In the EB IlIA, the painted ceramic (Bemalte Keramik, Gruppe D) with its decorations and forms repeats the ceramic of the late (Karnut-Shengavit) stage of Armenian Kura-Araxes. In the EB IIIB-C stage the Schwarzpolierte Keramik comprises 90% of the material, testifying to the continuance ofKuro-Araxes culture in Nor~untepe in the time ofV1II-VI levels (Hauptmann 1969,2000).

6. In addition to the general chronologies outlined by, among others, Areshian (1974), Martirosian (1964), and Pogrebova (1977), several works have addressed the material chronologies of more restricted areas such as the Shirak plain (Khachatryan 197;) and northeast Armenia (Esaian 1976). A number of analyses have focused on temporal change in a single material type (such as Esaian [1966] on weapons and Piggott [1968] on wheeled vehicles) or in a single site inventory (such as Kuftin [1941, 1946] on the Trialeti material and Esaian and Oganesian [1969] on the materials from the Dilijan collections). 7. The seal from tomb 422 at Artik repeats elements of the so-called "lvIitannian style" of seals. The positioning of the central figure of the seal, a winged goddess with the tree of life, recalls seal number 619 of the Marcopoli collection (Teissier 1984: 293). The other flanking figures in the Artik seal-figures with bird heads and the bisecting body line-and the astral images evoke similar parallels with numbers 608, 611-617 of the Marcopoli group. The author considers these seals as falling within the parameters of the l\litannian type. The Artik seal also has parallels to the Alalakh seals with bird headed human figures (Collon 1982b: 110 [# 97]; compare Louvre examples in Contenau [1922: pI. 36: 238, 265, 272] and a similar seal from Enkomi in Collon [1987: 74]). 8. X-ray fluorescence analyses were performed by J. Keller (Institute of Mineralogy, Petrology and Chemistry, University of Albert-Ludwig, Freiburg, Germany).