The built landscape also reflected this change in socio-political organisation. Settlements, characterised by a new type of stone architecture, began to appear in the highest altitudes. Their distinctive plans of juxtaposed rooms arranged in a linear or symmetrical plan around a courtyard, quite different to the fortresses in the southern Caucasus, do not reflect a hierarchy.They do, however, point to labour organisation and a strong sense of group identity. Equally significant is the appearance of animal enclosures, suggesting the important role of herding and pastoralism in the subsistence economy.

Broadly speaking, the distribution of the Koban cultural province straddled the densely settled landscape of southern Russia, stretching over the Stavropol Plateau around Kislovodsk through Krasnodar, Karachai-Cherkessia, and Kabardino-Balkaria to northern and southern Ossetia (Figure 8.1).At its western end it merged with the fringe of the Colchian cultural province, which occupied the eastern Black Sea littoral around the Taman Peninsula. Koban communities avoided the Caspian Sea, making the region around Alleroi in eastern Chechnia their easternmost extension. The Koban cultural province encompasses a range of different ecological niches within mountains and foothills, and in some studies it is segmented into western, central, and eastern regions.

KOBAN AND COLCHIAN: ONE OR TWO TRADITIONS?

The relationship between the Koban culture and that of Colchis (western Georgia), discussed in Chapter 10, is a contentious one.There are those who prefer to clump the two traditions together on the basis of typological similarities between metal objects and the occurrence of Koban objects south of the Caucasus range, such as in Shida Kartli.This group considers Koban and Colchis variants of a larger cultural complex.2 While interconnectivity cannot be denied, metalwork in itself does not constitute an archaeological culture.3 The position taken here is to separate Koban and Colchis, a view warranted, to my mind, by differences in other cultural features, most especially settlement and burial types, and other material things, such as ceramics.4 Essentially, I argue that the metalwork of this period was shared by the elites of this vast region, which had a multi-ethnic character. Hence, social identity at this time was represented by variability in certain elements such as burial types, yet at the same time social ideology was best expressed by portable metal objects. Moreover, as discussed in Chapter 10, Colchis of the Late Bronze and early

2 For views that unite the Koban and Colchian cultures, see Gogadze 1982; Reinhold 2007;Apakidze 2009.

3According to Tekhov (2002), the origins of the Koban are to be sought in the Shida Kartli region, a view that is not shared by many.

4Others who share a similar view, but for different reasons, include Dzhaparidze 1950; Krupnov 1960;Tekhov 1977, 2002; Pantskhava 1988; Kozenkova 1996.

Iron Age was deeply rooted in local traditions extending back into the second millennium, if not earlier.

KOBAN: ITS PERIODISATION AND CONNECTIONS

For our purposes, we can divide the Koban culture into two broad chronological phases: the earlier incorporates the Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age (ca. 1400–600 BC) period, originally referred to as ‘pre-Scythian’; the second phase (ca. 600–400 BC), or the Late Iron Age, is characterised by the dramatic intrusion of Scythian material culture and customs.5 Even today, with the ready availability of radiocarbon dating, this schematic timeline relies mostly on attempts to link Koban grave provisions with those found in sequences of neighbouring lands.

From the earliest days of research in the nineteenth century, scholars looked towards Europe for answers. Thus, Chantre saw similarities in the central European Hallstatt culture, which had only just come to light, and more than a century later appeals are still made to the Late Bonze Age of Central Europe (BzD), attributed to the Urnfeld Culture.6 Others, such as Iessen, thought that Eastern Europe was a better source of influence.7 Neither of these Europeoriented perspectives is very persuasive, because we simply have no trail of material from Europe to the Caucasus, as would be expected of an interaction network. Southward-looking studies began with Kuftin, whose loose connections with Urartu gained little traction, and Claude Schaeffer, who saw the iron objects from Koban as chronologically significant, bracketing them between 1200 and 1000 BC.8 The most plausible views on regional connections are those that look towards western and central Georgia – Colchis and Shida Kartli – where similar metal objects point to corridors of communication between the northern Caucasus and regions further south.

We owe the first rigorous internal assessment of the Koban culture to Evgenii Krupnov. In his milestone study, he detailed the rise and fall of Koban material culture – a formative period followed by an apogee and a decline under Scythian influences – all encapsulated within five or six centuries (ca. 1100–500 BC).9 Valentina Kozenkova has refined Krupnov’s developmental sequence.

5 Kozenkova 1996.

6Chantre 1886: 40–100; Terenozhkin 1976; Kozenkova 2004. The Urnfeld Culture, the Late Bronze Age of central Europe, is generally assigned to the period from BzD (1300– 1200 BC) through Hallstatt A and B (1200–750 BC), according to Paul Reinecke’s (Reinecke 1965) chronological system. Following this are Hallstatt C and D (750–475 BC), attributed to the European Early Iron Age. For a brief overview of the European