Monumentalism and Its Meaning in the Western Caucasus

296 Dolmens for the Dead

greatest attention has focused on the European megalithic tombs, and more recently connections with the Globular Amphorae and Funnel Beaker cultures have been resurrected.29 But unlike Europe, where the wealth of evidence on Neolithic settlements and monuments enables a rigorous understanding of regional diversity, the western Caucasus is bereft of contextual particulars, and has only just moved beyond an evolutionary typology of mortuary chambers. Nevertheless, we must make a start and move beyond simplistic analogies.

For many years, given the old foreshortened chronology based on a few uncalibrated radiocarbon dates, it was customary to place the Caucasian dolmens within the period from about 2700 BC to 1300 BC.30 With the appearance of refined chronometric techniques, the dolmens are now pushed back to at least 3250 BC, placing them roughly in line with tail end of the Neolithic in the western Caucasus and the beginning of the Proto-Colchian culture in the lowlands.To this rather foggy nexus of cultural traditions could be added the possible continuity of late Mesolithic hunter and forager groups in highland caves.

How, then, can we explain the conspicuousness of dolmens? They can be viewed in several ways, though none presents any clear path at the moment. On one level, dolmens may be treated as indicative of new forms of social organisation. The variations in size and decorations may reflect an emerging social complexity.31 One could also argue that the clusters of dolmens might reflect a territorial consciousness, such as boundaries of family groups, or perhaps be a response to a shortage of land. Although these scenarios offer an alternative to the idea that dolmens were intrusive structures, products of migrants, both arguments nonetheless have teleological overtones and are still basically evolutionary in scope.That is, dolmens are seen as part of the rise of social complexity, triggered perhaps by a local response to problems of population pressure.

We should bear in mind that despite the multiplicity of variant forms that the tombs take, their geographical distribution is fairly discrete – a region hemmed in by sea, lowlands, and steppes. A picture is emerging that with the arrival of farming groups, this north-eastern corner of the Black Sea was at the intersection of a number of traditions. Some already had the know-how required for cereal cultivation, whereas others, the late exponents of Mesolithic populations, continued their hunting, foraging, and fishing customs. It could be argued that this interaction between native and newcomer might hold the key to the beginnings of monumentality in the Caucasus.

Is it possible, for instance, that the dolmens are part of the transformation of indigenous foragers to indigenous farmers? If this were the case, these

29Rezepkin 1988, 2012.

30Markovin 1994a.

31Kohl and Trifonov 2014: 1587.

monumental tombs with collective burials could be seen as the native expression of ‘permanence’, a response to sedentary villages. As yet we have next to no evidence on the relationship between settlements and funerary monuments to test this hypothesis. In the absence of large stable villages, dolmens might have functioned as a communal focal point, a permanent house of the dead for many generations.While stable residential units have yet to be discovered and properly investigated, it can be said that dolmens provided a long-lasting ritual counterweight. Drawing on the European experience, this ‘indigenous model’, whereby dolmens are seen as expressions of different social groups, appeals to local circumstances, without succumbing to notions of colonists or migrants.32

32 Hodder 1984; Scarre 2002. Cf. Sherratt 1990.

CHAPTER 7

THE EMERGENCE OF ELITES AND

A NEW SOCIAL ORDER (250 0 – 150 0 BC)

Go, baby, go: it must have been an exhilarating experience.

(Andrew Sherratt on animal traction)1

Towards the end of the Early Bronze Age and through the subsequent Middle Bronze Age, the social and political circumstances of communities in the southern Caucasus changed markedly. Over much of the south-eastern Caucasus, in the plains of Kakheti, Alazani, and the Samtskhe-Dzhavakheti plateau that extends into northern Armenia, we have the appearance of new influences, perhaps new groups.These forces cut across the egalitarian traditions and values of the Kura-Araxes communities, who seem to have abandoned their villages.

Over the next millennium, the built landscape changed dramatically.Villages assumed a transient quality, possibly pointing to a mobile lifestyle based on stockbreeding, and today these shallow settlements are difficult to spot. Barrow burials, on the other hand, pepper the terrain from highlands to plains, and are the dominant feature across the lands. Some are large and richly furnished, built with mortuary houses that harboured astonishing wealth. Included were copious quantities of metalwork, amongst it the first tin-bronzes in south Caucasia, items of prestige, and a wooden wheeled vehicle or two. Other barrows are small, mere bumps rising no more than 50 cm above the ground.The varied sizes of these barrows and the different quantities of wealth they contain point to the emergence of social hierarchies and growing inequality. Control of territory and scarce resources, such as precious metals and cattle, no doubt contributed to the competition that led to this disparity.This was the period of new elites. It was also a period that produced unequivocal images of war and violence.

1 Sherratt 2006a – an English translation of Sherratt 2006b.

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