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and complex hierarchical systems control production and exchange. The corpus of shapes is fairly limited and generally open, with globular pots and round-profiled bowls particularly common. Decorations are executed in matt red, brown or black paint on a cream to pinkish-buff background. Designs are generally geometric—zigzags, obliques and bands—are simple and often haphazardly painted with a fairly thick brush.

Eastern Anatolia

As we move eastwards from the Euphrates, into the rugged highlands that comprises the vast province of the Kura-Araxes culture, Syro-Mesopotamian influences begin to fade. TransCaucasian affiliations manifest themselves more prominently, but detailed insight, as for the Late Chalcolithic, is limited. Sos Höyük (Eruzurm) offers the most hope, but its restricted exposures for the Early Bronze Age preclude a full understanding of settlement layout. Nearby are the sites of Karaz, Güzelova and Pulur excavated by Hamit Kos¸ay, but none provides a differentiated stratigraphy.105 Further along, in the Lake Van Basin, we have Karagündüz and Dilkaya.106

After the formative period of the Late Chalcolithic, eastern Anatolia continued to play a pivotal role in the character of the Kura-Araxes. Within this divided landscape, this horizon is today represented by numerous mound sites that contain the accumulated debris of farming and transhumant settlements, mostly of modest proportions, averaging about 150 m in diameter. Larger sites do exist, especially in the western periphery of this culture province, along the Turkish Upper Euphrates region, and the eastern periphery, in the Ag˘ rı province and modern Armenia, where fortified sites have been reported. The processes involved in the swift and astonishing dispersal of this horizon are still obscure, but evidence suggests the migration of people to a large extent. Whether this involved directional movement of certain groups from one region to another, or a more mosaic, “leapfrogging” model, is difficult to say, but the earlier view of a wave of people is unlikely.107 There has been a tendency to view the Kura-Araxes assemblage as rather homogenous, whose history unfolds in a linear narrative, promoting monolithic and static notions of cultural development. The picture is far more complex. Even though, on the whole, communities tenaciously preserved fundamental elements of the KuraAraxes culture—hearths, distinctive ceramic attributes, architectural styles, and use of space and so on—the horizon is distinguished through multiple regional adaptations, reflecting a conscious definition of group and individual identity.

We have little understanding of architecture at Sos Höyük during the Early Bronze Age I (Period VB, 3000–2800 BC), which is represented only by floor levels and a hearth. In Period VC

(EB II), a freestanding, single-roomed house was founded on stone and built of mud bricks. A decorated circular clay hearth with central projections was positioned at the end of the room; bench and clay bin are standard fitments. Whereas pits define the Early Bronze Age III at Sos Höyük (Period VD), the succeeding period (Sos Höyük IV) witnesses an elaboration of Kura-

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Araxes features within multiroomed houses.108 Hearths, in particular, evolve along new lines. From the horned andirons of the Late Chalcolithic period, portable hearths develop into horseshoe shapes with knobbed projections. Likewise the plain, round hearths fixed into the floors of Late Chalcolithic houses, develop into elaborate features with raised central horns by the early second millennium BC (Figure 5.20). At Karagündüz, juxtaposed mud brick buildings faced each other on either side of a wide street. Their rectilinear plans contrast with a circular structure partly exposed at the end of the street.

In ceramics several trends are noteworthy (Figure 5.21). During the first half of the third millennium BC, double spirals were a characteristic motif in the eastern part of the Kura-Araxes cultural province, but absent in the Upper Euphrates. In the earliest deposits at Karaz, they are

Figure 5.20 Evolutionary scheme of hearths and andirons from Sos Höyük near Erzurum, ranging from Late Chalcolithic (top) through Early Bronze to Middle Bronze (bottom)

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rather loose coils that meet at the top, whereas later, at nearby Pulur, potters preferred tighter spirals with narrower coils. Some of these spirals are in relief, whereas others are formed through a combination of grooving and relief. At Karagünduz, spiral patterns are incised on the surface and are rather crude by comparison. Impressed circles and vertical grooves, often alternating around the neck, are also a common motif. Nakhichevan handles (broad-based loops) are popular in the easternmost regions and Trans-Caucasus, but peter out as one moves west. The most common shape associated with spiral designs is the tall jar with recessed neck. Other shapes of the standard assemblage include hemispherical and straight-sided bowls, and lids with a central depression.

Around 2300 BC, or a tad earlier, the fortunes of communities living in eastern Anatolia began to change, largely because of new influences emanating from southern Caucasus. In the archaeological record of Caucasus, this is reflected in a number of large and striking elite tombs found throughout Trans-Caucasus, whose construction and contents differed markedly from the modest and simple pit inhumations of the preceding millennium. Termed kurgan burials and first investigated in Georgia in the Trialeti region, these new barrow inhumations and their rich assemblage, which included vessels of precious metals and, in some cases, a vehicle with four wheels of solid wood, are generally accepted as the hallmarks of a new age distinguished by fundamental social changes.

This change is also reflected in ceramics. A new array of shapes and modes of decoration, erring toward delicate and incised designs, begins to appear alongside Kura-Araxes pottery in easternmost Anatolia. These bring with them new terms derived from Trans-Caucasian burial complexes—Martkopi/early Trialeti and Bedeni.109 How these ceramic repertoires relate typologically with the late phase of Kura-Araxes is still a matter of debate. Martkopi and early Trialeti, here lumped together, are distinguished by sharply biconical forms, a lustrous black burnished surface and incised ornamentation (Figure 5.21: 6, 8). One example from Sos Höyük also has ochre paste applied after firing. Rounded forms do occur, but incised ornamentation prevails generally in the form of pendant triangles. Bedeni pottery is lustrous. Potters used graphite and mica to produce an almost mirror-like silvery sheen, which at Sos Höyük is best seen on black vessels with a tripartite profile. These vessels are generally plain, although in Armenia they are often decorated with fine incisions and ascribed to late Kura-Araxes. The Bedeni pottery assemblage in Georgia is also characterized by straight-sided cups, spurred handles, multiple knobs and pattern burnishing, but only some of these features are present at Sos Höyük.

One of the issues that has generated considerable interest is the mode of economic subsistence practiced by the Kura-Araxes communities. Most researchers have argued in favor of a specialized strategy involving pastoral mobility. Accordingly, eastern Anatolia in the Early Bronze Age has been viewed as a landscape settled largely by nomadic stockbreeders, or at the very least by communities who practiced some form of transhumance—a subsistence strategy that involved part of a community moving with their flocks, seasonally or periodically, to different environmental zones. This picture is based mostly on three cultural attributes: The plan of certain villages—freestanding, rectilinear houses, or compounds of circular rooms—that

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