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Silver Goblets: Interpretations
How one should read these stories remains problematic. Boehmer maintains that the scenes are court scenes, which drew inspiration from Mesopotamia. He discerns a prince, viziers, musicians, warriors, a mythical creature, and wild animals worthy of the hunters.We are on slightly firmer ground when it comes to identifying artistic traditions. Karen Rubinson has persuasively argued that certain iconographic details on the two goblets derive directly from the glyptic tradition of the Old Assyrian colony period, as reflected on the seal impressions from Kültepe Kanesh.118 Such details of imagery include the general nature of the ritual scenes; the construction of the furniture – especially the ritual tables with hooved feet; shoes with turned-up toes; standing figures with bent, upraised arms; and lions in profile looking front on. Boehmer, however, argues that the stimulus behind the imagery of the Karashamb goblet is the iconography from the Early Dynastic and Akkadian period.119 He suggests that features such as the lion-headed eagle (Imdugud), the seated lyre player, the squatting position of the pair of figures, dagger types, and several other features are quintessentially Mesopotamian. If Boehmer were correct in his assumption, then we would need to account for the time lag between the Early Dynastic and Akkadian sources of art and the Karashamb goblet, dated to the early second millennium BC.The central Anatolian connections with a contemporary culture province certainly make sense in this regard, and they suggest that the dynamics across the highlands in this period were east–west, as they were in the Kura-Araxes period, rather than north–south, as they tended to be in the pre-Kura-Araxes period.
Whatever the art historical connections, there are several important themes that run through the narrative and reflect on the society. Smith has cogently summarised these as ‘war and conquest, feasting and celebration, punishment and ritual, and hunting’.120 These images and the accompanying grave furnishings leave no doubt that we are dealing with a warrior class, whose leaders had characteristics that society believed allowed them to overcome rivals. Although we have no texts, the imagery is telling. It comes as little surprise that there is an emphasis on the masculine qualities of the leader, such as weapons, against which men in this period presumably measured their own manliness.
More Metal Containers
A silver conical bucket from Barrow 17 and the bronze-footed vessel from Barrow 5 are equally of interest. Edged with gold, the imagery on the damaged bucket portrays plants and animals in bas-relief. Kuftin took it as a hunting
118Rubinson 2003.
119Boehmer and Kossack 2000.
120Smith 2015: 150.
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scene, even though the figure of the hunter is no longer preserved.121 The bucket also has a distinctive basket handle, similar in design to the one on the bronze vessel. This small cauldron, standing 21 cm high, is another fine example of the Trialeti metalworking tradition (Figure 7.19(2–3)). Beaten from a sheet of metal, it has a reinforced edge and a curved wire handle with turned up ends that are attached to two loops; these are in turn connected to fasteners (metal plates or cylinders) riveted to the wall. Its decorated conical foot is hollow with a fl at closed base.This type of handle has been found across the Near East within an Early Dynastic Akkadian context and through to Mycenae (Shaft Grave V), but, as Rubinson has shown, the closest parallels come from early second millennium levels at Kültepe-Kanesh.122
Gold Work
Gold work also reached a peak in this period. Jewellery items include fl at, discheaded pins decorated with repoussé dots.A unique gold cup (Trialeti Barrow 17), manufactured from a single sheet of gold, possibly on a lathe, attests to metalworking sophistication.123 It has a double wall and is decorated with filigree volutes encrusted with semi-precious stones – carnelian, lapis lazuli, and red sardine.The volutes were made separately and firmly attached to the wall with small hooks.The pedestal of the cup has a fl at, soldered base, decorated in an openwork pattern and set with jet.
From Trialeti Barrow 8 came the equally impressive gold necklace of fourteen large spherical hollow beads of increasing size, most decorated with repoussé dots or true granulation. Its centrepiece is a pectoral of agate in a gold mounting embedded with carnelian (Figure 7.21(1)).124 This piece is particularly remarkable as a barometer of the burgeoning trade in luxury items across the Near East and Mediterranean. Since its discovery, this example of south Caucasian granulation has been compared to jewellery from Uruk bearing the name of Shusin (2037–2030 BC), of the Ur III period, but others prefer to use an agate piece from Ur attributed to the Akkadian period to date the necklace, thereby lifting the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age into the last century of the third millennium BC.125 Similar exquisite jewellery pieces have been found at Lori Berd Barrow 65 and 94 (Figure 7.21(6–9, 11)).
A high (ca. 2200–2350 BC) date for the first phase of the Trialeti Middle BronzeAge is in line with Gogadze’s reckoning for Barrow 14,which contained
121The photograph in Kuftin 1941: pl. 88 has more of the scene preserved than exits today; Rubinson 2003: 140.
122Rubinson 2001.
123Kuftin 1941: 92, pl. 103; Gogadze 1972: 69; Zhorzhikashvili and Gogdaze 1974: 93, fig. 737, pl. 89; Miron and Orthmann 1995: 85, 238, pl. 67; Soltes 1999: 63, 144–5.
124Kuftin 1941, fig. 97, pls XCIV–XCV; Gogadze 1972, pl. 20; Zhorzhikashvili and Gogdaze 1974: pl. 71; Miron and Orthmann 1995: 91, 241.
125Abramishvili 2010: 171, following Gogadze (1972) and Kavtaradze (1983).
Figure 7.21. (1) Trialeti Barrow 8, gold necklace with agate centrepiece (courtesy Georgian National Museum); (2–3) Lori Berd Barrow 92, ceramic containers; (4) Lori Berd Barrow 61, ceramic container; (5, 7–11) Lori Berd Barrow 65, ceremonial dagger edged in gold, rapier, pins with spherical heads and beads; (6) Lori Berd Barrow 94, select beads (after Devedjian 2006).
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an assortment of foreign objects from Egypt to the Indus.126 Similar banded agate pieces, components of necklaces, have been found at the Armenian sites of Karashamb and Nerkin Naver, and from Tepe Hissar in north-eastern Iran to the island of Malta in the central Mediterranean.127 It is the Maltese agate segment from the Punic site of Tas-Silġ that is closest to the Trialeti example, both in shape and banding, and they are quite possibly even from the same workshop. Probably crafted in the late third millennium BC as a component part of jewellery, the Tas-Silġ item was broken, travelled and eventually found its way to Malta, with a cuneiform inscription etched into one face that has dated the piece to 1300 BC.
Tools and Weapons
Bronze tools and weapons are not found in large numbers in the elite burials, being more commonplace in the small barrows. Amongst the weapons, a slim sword blade (rapier) from Trialeti Barrow 1 is noteworthy. Swords of this type are not typical of the Trialeti culture, but are nonetheless found in a random distribution across central south Caucasia, including Lori Berd Barrow 65 (Figure 7.21(10)) and foreshadow the Late Bronze Age rapiers.128 This lethal weapon, with its pronounced length (about 1 m) and high central ridge running down its entirety, heralded a novel style of warfare. Its slender, sharply edged and pointed form, widening at the handle end, is best suited for thrusting attacks.
Parallels with the Type A sword from the eastern Mediterranean are compelling, yet the south Caucasian examples are unlikely to be imports. Instead, they were locally made expressions of a technological idea that swept through several regions. According to Mikheil Abramishvili, the rapier’s prototype can be found in a Middle Bronze Age I context (Saduga Barrow 2).129 Indeed, he goes one step further and suggests, on the basis of archaic elements the south Caucasian rapiers bear, that this weapon may have originated in the southern Caucasus and spread to the Aegean via Anatolia.130 That these rapiers were found in medium-sized barrows indicates to Abramishvili that they belonged to a particular class of warrior, in a more privileged position than the rank and file who were equipped with daggers, ovoid shield and spears. Other weapons include daggers with plain or fluted midrib and bronze socketed
126Abramishvili 2010: 171.
127Sagona and Sagona (in press) for a discussion of the inter-regional connections. Santrot 1996: 64, fig. 32 (Karashamb); Kalantaryan 2007, tables XIII–XV (Nerkin Naver, Barrow Burial N1) – I would like to thank Ruben Badalyan for Nerkin Naver reference; Schmidt 1937: pl. XXXV (Tepe Hissar IIIC).
128Abramishvili 2001.
129Abramishvili 2001; 2010: 172; Picchelauri 1997, pl. 36.
130Picchelauri (1997: 17), contra the early views of Iessen, Kushnareva and Martirosian, also argues that the Caucasian rapiers were an indigenous invention. But his chronology is lower that Abramishvili’s.