Libmonster ID: KG-1301
Author(s) of the publication: V. M. MASSON

Moscow, 1975. 415 p., 82 fig. The print run is 2,300. Price 2 rubles 42 kopecks.

The ancient Caucasus is a powerful independent center in the system of highly developed cultures of the Near East. One of the civilizations of the Ancient Eastern type, Urartian, which has spread in Transcaucasia, is widely known, and in the study of which the role of domestic researchers M. V. Nikolsky, N. Ya. Marr, I. I. Meshchaninov, B. B. Piotrovsky, G. A. Melikishvili, N. V. Harutyunyan, A. A. Martirosyan and many others is so great. At the same time, archaeological studies of the last two decades clearly show that the true origins of ancient civilizations go back to a very remote era and are ultimately connected with the radical revolution in the economy that occurred with the transition to agriculture and cattle breeding. Pre-Urartian monuments of the Caucasus dating back to the Bronze Age were known for a relatively long time, but the oldest settlements of farmers and pastoralists were discovered here only in the early 1960s. Simultaneously with their study, there was an intensive process of studying the monuments of the Bronze Age. Now we know thousands of monuments of the pre-Urartian era, and the archeology of the Caucasus itself is a large and independent branch of knowledge.

R. M. Munchaev, Deputy Director of the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences, is a successful experience in systematizing these new data. The author relies not only on extensive material obtained as a result of his own INR studies-

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The author also refers to the museum collections and literature, summarizes a huge amount of information that allows us to cover the ancient history of this region so fully and comprehensively for the first time. In his bibliographic review, R. M. Munchaev highly appreciates the contribution of the outstanding archaeologist B. A. Kuftin (p. 23-26), notes the importance of B. B. Piotrovsky's course of lectures "Archeology of Transcaucasia" published in 1949, and dwells in detail on the activities of archaeologists from Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan and other North Caucasian autonomous republics and regions. He analyzes in detail specific materials for several large epochs (Neolithic, Eneolithic, and Early Bronze).

However, the data describing these epochs are far from evenly presented. The most expressive Neolithic materials come from mountainous Dagestan and the Western Caucasus, and there is reason to raise the question of the very significant antiquity of the Dagestan agricultural hearth, where the development of ancient cultures took place in natural conditions that contributed to the early formation of agriculture and cattle breeding. R. M. Munchaev believes that in the Early Neolithic period in the region as a whole, hunting and hunting remained the main foraging (p. 75), whereas during the late Neolithic the transition to a food production economy began (p.75-76).

The author examines in detail the Eneolithic of the Caucasus (pp. 80 - 148) with its complexes of sedentary farmers and pastoralists discovered over the past decade in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Dagestan. These materials deepen the history of the Caucasian farmers up to the fifth millennium BC (it seems to us that it would not be a big surprise to refer them to the sixth millennium BC). The monuments are represented by three groups that reflect chronological and local differences (Shomu-tepe - Shulaveri, Kyul-tepe - Teghut in Transcaucasia and Ginchi in Russia). Dagestan), vividly characterize the Caucasian ancient agricultural center, which now stands on a par with other centers of the Near and Middle East. The transition of a number of tribal groups to a new type of economy has led to uneven development, and at least since this period there has been some lag in the Black Sea regions. R. M. Munchaev pays great attention to complexes in all districts and regions, and therefore dwells in detail on the dating of the Nalchik burial ground, which, in his opinion, refers to this particular area. period (p. 138-147).

The next, third period, which falls mainly on the third millennium BC, is represented by two groups of striking archaeological complexes - the Kuro - Arak and Maikop. Here the material obtained by the author himself is especially numerous. For example, R. M. Munchaev considers the Kuro-Arak complexes as an archaeological source mainly based on Dagestani materials; the most complete data are collected on the Maikop-type monuments, but, unfortunately, there are no corresponding maps. Monuments of the Kuro-Arak type form a number of territorial variants, the justification of which on the basis of a strictly archaeological analysis is largely a matter of the future, although some of these variants are already being outlined (p.172). This circumstance, as well as the huge area of distribution (covering, in addition to Transcaucasia and Dagestan, also north-eastern Turkey and north - western Iran), allow us to raise the question of the existence of not just the Kuro - Arak culture, but a large Kuro-Arak cultural community. At the same time, it is significant that during the settlement of the Kuro-Arak tribes to the north, the tribes of the Maikop culture completely preserved their identity; this led to the appearance of syncretic monuments on the territory of Chechen-Ingushetia, considered by R. M. Munchaev (pp. 336-366).

The monograph not only covers the ancient history of the Caucasus, but also outlines the main stages of the historical process in the specific conditions of the region. Joint consideration of materials from Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus in one study allowed the author to fully describe the historical situation that developed in the V-III millennium BC. In this era, the emergence and flourishing of agricultural and pastoral crops, their general level of development, and real connections united these regions into a single Caucasian center of ancient agriculture, which occupies an equal position on the territory of the USSR with two others - Central Asian and Moldovan-Ukrainian.

Naturally, not all issues in the book are covered equally, and the analysis of some of them is not sufficiently convincing. The entire study is somewhat impoverished by the absence, if not of a chapter, then at least of a paragraph specifically devoted to the study-

page 162

the lemmas of the social order. Individual characteristics found in the text do not fill this gap at all. The problems of the origin of the Kuro-Arak monuments are too briefly discussed (p. 196), especially since further questions of the ethnic identity of its bearers are covered (p.409-414). The question of the possibility of local domestication of the horse is unconvincing (pp. 160, 387-389). Of course, these and a number of other problems will be the subject of study and various discussions for a long time to come.

R. M. Munchaev does not limit his research to the chosen region. It defines the place of the Caucasus in a number of other centers of early agricultural cultures and its connection with the Near East. The question of these connections arises already when considering the problem of the composition of the producing economy in the Caucasus. The presence of wild cereals undoubtedly contributed to the transition of Caucasian tribes to agriculture, especially since in one of the sites of Dagestan (dating back to the Mesolithic era), reaping knives were found, which (according to G. F. Korobkova) were most likely intended for collecting wild cereals. At the same time, the earliest agricultural complexes of the Caucasus, such as Shomu - tepe and Shulaveri, show in some respects common features with the Antero - Asian monuments. Thus, the lack of arrowheads and the widespread use of slings bring them closer to such complexes of Northern Mesopotamia and Iran of the VII-VI millennium BC as Jarmo, Hassuna, Sialk, and Haji - Firuz. As for the oldest ceramics in the Caucasus, they are not painted, as in all the above-mentioned complexes, but decorated with carved ornaments or carvings. Munchaev raises the question of the possible connection of Neolithic ceramics of the Caucasus with similarly ornamented dishes of the Hassun complexes (p. 77), where they coexist with painted dishes. The northern Mesopotamian complexes of Tell Sotto and Umm Dabbagia are also more ancient sources of this ceramic tradition.

At the same time, the circular structures that are so characteristic of Shomu Tepe and Shulaveri are also absent in Umm Dabbagiya and Hassun, and, on the contrary, they are typical of the Khalaf culture, which replaced Hassunekche monuments in northern Mesopotamia in the 5th millennium BC. It is possible that the buildings in both Shomu Tepe and Khalaf date back to some common architectural tradition typical of the regions of north-eastern Turkey and Transcaucasia. However, the level of development of the Khalaf monuments significantly exceeds the early settlements of Transcaucasian farmers, whose culture retains a very archaic appearance even in the V-IV millennium BC, when they are influenced by Khalaf, and mainly, as R. M. Munchaev correctly showed, by the late Ubayd in its northern version (pp. 119-1120)..

Thus, in the Caucasus, the development of an agricultural and pastoral economy, on the one hand, was due to favorable natural conditions, and on the other, it was stimulated by Middle Eastern ties. The local culture as a whole retains an archaic, as if Neolithic appearance for a relatively long time. Contacts of this culture with Mesopotamia are indisputable, although there is no certainty about the migration of individual tribal groups here (as R. M. Munchaev believes - p. 122). Mesopotamian complexes in the form of sets of types of things are absent in Transcaucasia.

The cultures of the Caucasus in the third millennium BC are exceptionally bright. Despite all the locality of variants (natural for such a huge territory), monuments of the Kuro-Arak type reveal a stable internal cultural unity. In socio-economic terms, the Kuro - Arak culture-bearing tribes naturally continue the traditions of the previous period. Their economic base remains developed agriculture and cattle breeding, with a noticeable progress in a number of industries (primarily pottery and metallurgy), which allows us to speak about the allocation of communal crafts as an independent economic structure .1 At the same time, this period saw a kind of strengthening of cultural ties with Asia Minor, which was noted by B. A. Kuftin and confirmed by most researchers, including R. M. Munchaev .2 Unfortunately, this aspect of cultural relations remains somewhat obscured in the book.

However, given this direction of kul-

1 See V. M. Masson. Handicraft production in the era of the primitive system. Voprosy Istorii, 1972, No. 3, pp. 110-111.

2 B. A. Kuftin. Urartian columbarium at the foot of Ararat and the Kuro-Arak Eneolithic. Bulletin of the State Museum of Georgia, vol. XII-B, Tbilisi, 1944, p. 31; R. M. Munchaev. The oldest culture of the north-eastern Caucasus. "Materials and research on the archeology of the USSR", N 100. Moscow, 1961. p. 152.

page 163

It is difficult to accept the author's hypothesis about the appearance of a Mesopotamian component in the Maikop monuments as a result of the possible advance of "separate groups of people from Mesopotamia" to the North Caucasus (p. 376). Of course, the Maikop phenomenon of the formation and flourishing of the culture of settled pastoralists and farmers with the richest monumental princely tombs in the North Caucasus in the third millennium BC cannot be understood outside of the Near Asian contacts in the broad sense of the word. Ceremonial weapons and valuable ornaments of the Sumerian type most likely could serve as a kind of standard of wealth, and therefore they were widely distributed in the Middle East in the third millennium BC: "in the centers of ancient civilizations, and on the vast periphery from Gisar in northeastern Iran to Alaj-Guyuk in Asia Minor. It seems to us that the Mesopotamian elements in the Maikop complexes should be considered in this way, focusing mainly on the Asia Minor connections of Maikop, where ore for a significant mass of metal products could also come from .3
However, the intensive development of the sedentary tribes of the Caucasus in the third millennium BC did not lead (in contrast to Asia Minor, non-Islamic Iran, and southern Central Asia) to the formation of large urban centers and local civilizations in the first half of the second millennium BC. In the second millennium BC, pastoral tribes became the bearers of social progress, whose wealth was also determined by the possession of ore sources. The monumental tombs of Trialeti and Zurtaketi serve as evidence of the power and prosperity of these tribal associations. The history of the latter determined the specifics of the development of the entire Caucasian region in the era that followed the flourishing of sedentary agricultural and pastoral communities, so thoroughly analyzed in the book by R. M. Munchaev.

3 E. N. Chernykh. History of the oldest metallurgy in Eastern Europe, Moscow, 1966, p. 47.

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V. M. MASSON, R. M. MUNCHAEV. CAUCASUS AT THE DAWN OF THE BRONZE AGE. NEOLITHIC, ENEOLITHIC, EARLY BRONZE AGE // Yerevan: Library of Armenia (LIB.AM). Updated: 19.01.2025. URL: https://lib.am/m/articles/view/R-M-MUNCHAEV-CAUCASUS-AT-THE-DAWN-OF-THE-BRONZE-AGE-NEOLITHIC-ENEOLITHIC-EARLY-BRONZE-AGE (date of access: 09.02.2025).

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