Trialetian

Trialetian is the name for an Upper Paleolithic-Epipaleolithic stone tool industry from the area south of the Caucasus Mountains^[1] and to the northern Zagros Mountains. It is tentatively dated to the period between 14,000 / 11,000 BCE and 6,000 BCE.^[2] The name of the archaeological culture derives from sites in the district of Trialeti in south Georgian Khrami river basin. These sites include Barmaksyzkaya and Edzani-Zurtaketi,.^[3] In Edzani, an Upper Paleolithic site, a significant percentage of the artifacts are made of obsidian.^[4]

The Caucasian-Anatolian area of Trialetian culture was adjacent to the Iraqi-Iranian Zarzian culture to the east and south as well as the Levantine Natufian to the southwest.^[5] Alan H. Simmons describes the culture as "very poorly documented".^[6] In contrast, recent excavations in the Valley of Qvirila river, to the north of the Trialetian region, display a Mesolithic culture. The subsistence of these groups were based on hunting Capra caucasica, wild boar and brown bear.^[7]

Literature

• Olivier Aurenche, Philippe Galet, Emmanuelle Régagnon-Caroline, Jacques Évin: Proto-Neolithic and Neolithic Cultures in the Middle East – the Birth of Agriculture, Livestock Raising, and Ceramics: A Calibrated 14C Chronology 12, 500-5500 cal BC, in: Near East Chronology: Archaeology and Environment. Radiocarbon 43,3 (2001) 1191–1202. (online, PDF)
• Stefan Karol Kozlowski: The Trialetian “Mesolithic” industry of the Caucasus, Transcaspia, Eastern Anatolia, and the Iranian Plateau. In: Stefan Karol Kozłowski, Hans Georg Gebel (ed.): Neolithic chipped stone industries of the Fertile Crescent, and their contemporaries in adjacent regions., Studies in Early Near Eastern Production, Subsistence and Environment 3, Berlin 1996, pg. 161–170.

References

1. ↑ Anna Stolberg: Glossar In: Vor 12.000 Jahren in Anatolien. Die ältesten Monumente der Menschheit, Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe (ed.), Stuttgart 2007, pg. 375–377, here: pg. 377.
2. ↑ Frédérique Brunet: Asie centrale: vers une redéfinition des complexes culturels de la fin du Pléistocène et des débuts de l’Holocène, in: Paléorient 28,2 (2002) pg. 9-24.
3. ↑ Nikolay I. Burchak-Abramovich, Oleg Grigor'evich Bendukidze: Fauna epipaleoliticheskoy stoyanki Zurtaketi, in: SANGSSR 55,3 (1969) pg. 32-33.
4. ↑ Karine Khristoforovna Kushnareva: The Southern Caucasus in Prehistory. Stages of Cultural and Socioeconomic Development from the Eighth to the Second Millennium B.C., University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology, 1997, pg. 9.
5. ↑ Nach Henri de Cotenson in: Syria, tomus 80, 2003, 270-271, here: pg. 271; Besprechung zu Marcel Otte (ed.): Préhistoire d’Anatolie. Genèse de deux mondes. Actes du Colloque international, Liège, 28 avril-3 mai 1997. Liège 1998.
6. ↑ Alan H. Simmons says the culture is "very poorly documented" (Alan H. Simmons: The Neolithic Revolution in the Near East. Transforming the Human Landscape, University of Arizona Press, 2011, pg. 53).
7. ↑ Ofer Bar-Yosef: Upper palaeolithic hunter-gatherers in western Asia, in: Vicki Cummings, Peter Jordan, Marek Zvelebil (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers, Oxford University Press, 2014, pg. 252–278, here: pg. 265 ff.

See also

• Mesolithic
• Epipaleolithic
• Prehistoric Georgia
• History of the Caucasus
• History of Mesopotamia
• Prehistory of Iran
• Zarzian culture
• Natufian culture