The game of fifty-eight holes is one of the longest recognized games of antiquity, but also one of the least understood. New evidence from the Caspian littoral points to an early adoption of the game by Middle Bronze Age seasonally pastoral cattle herders in the late third millennium and early second millennium bc. Six boards bearing this game's distinct pattern were found at sites on the Abşeron Peninsula and Gobustan Reserve in Azerbaijan. Their presence there not only indicates that the region was connected to societies to the south, but also demonstrates the game's popularity across cultures and socioeconomic groups. Its supposed first appearance in Egypt is questioned in favour of a south-western Asian origin.

Multiproxy sedimentary sequence analysis constitutes the basis for reconstructions of past paleoenvironments and climate evolution. These sequences are, for the most part, obtained by coring in lakes, maars or crater lakes whose waters can record volcanic activity or karstic contributions, especially in Eastern Anatolia and the Lesser Caucasus. The reservoir age effect in these geological contexts leads to an apparent aging of the radiocarbon ages which also affects the plants and animals developing in or near these waters and consequently the population consuming them. We present here some results obtained from modern samples taken from Mediterranean, central and eastern Anatolian lakes, from the Van and Sevan lakes and along the Kura River and its tributaries from the Lesser Caucasus. The effect of volcanic CO2 outgassing in the vicinity of maar crater lakes is also discussed.

A basic hypothesis is that cultural evolutionary processes sustain differences between groups, these differences have evolutionary relevance and they would not otherwise occur in a system without cultural transmission. The empirical challenge is that groups vary for many reasons, and isolating the causal effects of culture often requires appropriate data and a quasi-experimental approach to analysis. We address this challenge with historical data from the final Soviet census of 1989, and our analysis is an example of the epidemiological approach to identifying cultural variation. We find that the fertility decisions of Armenian, Georgian and Azeri parents living in Soviet-era Russia were significantly more son-biased than those of other ethnic groups in Russia. This bias for sons took the form of differential stopping rules; families with sons stopped having children sooner than families without sons. This finding suggests that the increase in sex ratios at birth in the Caucasus, which began in the 1990s, reflects a cultural preference for sons that predates the end of the Soviet Union. This result also supports one of the key hypotheses of gene–culture coevolution, namely that cultural evolutionary processes can support group-level differences in selection pressures that would not otherwise occur in a system without culture.

The deposition of intentionally damaged metal artefacts within burials and hoards is a phenomenon attested in areas as disparate as Ireland and the Caucasus during the Bronze and Iron Ages. While ritual significance is often attributed to such damage in burial contexts, the intentions behind the inclusion of damaged objects in hoards remain enigmatic. This article synthesises evidence for the intentional destruction of metal artefacts from 70 sites in the territory of modern Georgia and analyses patterns of deliberate damage over time and space. The study of these damaged artefacts enhances our understanding of ritual practice at a local level and locates the south Caucasus within the wider networks of this phenomenon.

The Bronze Age Maikop kurgan is one of the most richly furnished prehistoric burial mounds in the northern Caucasus. Its excavation in 1897 yielded a set of gold and silver tubes with elaborate tips and decorative bull figurines. Interpretations of these tubes include their use as sceptres and as poles to support a canopy. Re-examination of these objects, however, suggests they were used as tubes for the communal drinking of beer, with integral filters to remove impurities. If correct, these objects represent the earliest material evidence of drinking through long tubes—a practice that became common during feasts in the third and second millennia BC in the ancient Near East.

The expansion of the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates (seventh to ninth centuries AD) brought diverse regions from the Indus Valley to the Eurasian Steppe under hegemonic control. An overlooked aspect of this political process is the subsequent translocation of species across ecological zones. This article explores species introduction in the early Islamic world, presenting the first archaeological evidence for domestic water buffalo in the Caucasus—identified using zooarchaeological and ZooMS methods on material from the historical site of Bardhaʿa in Azerbaijan. We contextualise these finds with historical accounts to demonstrate the exploitation of medieval marginal zones and the effects of centralised social reorganisation upon species dispersal.

This paper reports on radiocarbon (14C) results from the recent archaeological investigations in the ancient frontier fortress of Rabati, in southwest Georgia, a collaborative research project involving archaeologists from the Georgian National Museum and the University of Melbourne. From the first three excavation seasons spanning 2016, 2018, and 2019, it became clear that significant Bedeni phase deposits capped most of the summit of the site. Levels with their distinctive vessels and a range of contemporary, local domestic wares, pits and some traces of architecture seal underlying Early Bronze Age strata. The Early Bronze Age levels include massive architecture rarely seen in Kura-Araxes settlements. Some finds can only be described as unique and extraordinary while others suggest that the core population was stable with long-held traditions, yet open to new influences infiltrating this highland site during the subsequent Early Kurgan (Martkopi-Bedeni) period. We discuss the key discoveries at Rabati relative to the 14C readings from the site within the wider setting of contemporary sites in the Caucasus.

In the nineteenth-century South Caucasus, hundreds of local farmers and nomads petitioned Russian authorities to allow them to become Christians. Most of them were Muslims and specifically requested to join the Armenian Apostolic Church. This article explores religious conversions to Armenian Christianity on Russia's mountainous southern border with the Ottoman Empire and Iran. It demonstrates that tsarist reforms, chiefly the peasant reform and the sedentarization of nomads, accelerated labor migration within the region, bringing many Muslims, Yazidis, and Assyrians into an Armenian environment. Local anxieties over Russian colonialism further encouraged conversions. I argue that by converting to Armenian Christianity many rural South Caucasians benefited from a change in their legal status, which came with the right to move residence, access to agricultural land, and other freedoms. Russia's Jewish communities, on the other hand, saw conversion to Armenian Christianity as a legal means to circumvent discrimination and obtain the right to live outside of the Pale of Settlement. By drawing on converts’ petitions and officials’ decisions, this article illustrates that the Russian government emerged as an ultimate arbiter of religious conversions, evaluating the sincerity of petitioners’ faith and how Armenian they had become, while preserving the empire's religious and social hierarchies.

The region of Khevsureti in Georgia is the historic home of a group of Kartvelian highlanders known as Khevsurs. As Khevsureti’s popularity as a mountain tourist destination has grown, so too has the popularity of an old story that asserts the Khevsurs are the descendants of a lost band of Crusaders. For 200 years, this meme has manifested itself in books about the region, newspaper articles, the work of a few scholars, and now much Internet discussion. The growing collection of cases has created the illusion of an unconsolidated quantity of evidence and many commentators have since taken the story to be a credible theory or actual legend. A systematic deconstruction and analysis of this story shows how this set of details initially formed, grew, and spread based on a few unreliable accounts in circulation beginning in the early 19th century. This article offers a case study of how such memes form and propagate; it provides an additional example of a Western tendency to romanticize and project elements of their own ethnicities into the Caucasus; and it examines this false history in terms of cultural appropriation and the relationship between ethnicity and narrative, adding to the literature on invented histories and pseudoarchaeology. Finally, this careful deconstruction and repudiation will help remove this story from serious discussions of cultural heritage in Khevsureti and show how historical memes and popular examples of pseudoarcheology spread and capture imaginations.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Georgian village and supplemented by a range of interviews and observations from different parts of Georgia, this paper explores the creative presence of religion in public schools. In 2005 and in line with the strong secularization and modernization discourse, the Georgian parliament passed a new law on education, restricting the teaching of religion in public schools and separating religious organizations and public schools; nevertheless, mainstream Orthodox Christianity is widely practiced in schools. The paper aims to show how Georgians use religious spaces in secular institutions to practice their identity, to perform being “true Georgians.” At the same time, they are adopting a strong secularization and modernization discourse. By doing so they create a new space, a third space, marked by in-betweenness. The study uses the theoretical lens of Thirdspace for analyzing the hybridity, the in-betweenness of practices and attitudes inherent for politics, religion, and everyday life of Georgians.

The Dmanisi site has yielded human remains and lithic industry associated with Late Pliocene–early Pleistocene fauna. The site is composed of volcanogenic sediments overlying basaltic lava flows. The lithostratigraphic sequence comprises two basic depositional units: Unit A, overlying the basalt flows, and Unit B on top. A paleomagnetic and rock-magnetic study has been carried out on 106 specimens from Units A and B and the uppermost basalt flow. The lava and Unit A provide normal polarities, while reversed polarities and anomalous directions are observed in Unit B, the latter probably due to overlapping of a secondary and a primary reversed polarity component. The lower part of the section shows a clear correlation with the Olduvai subchron, and the upper levels could be as young as 1.07 Ma. As human remains were found both in units with normal and reversed polarity, different non-contemporaneous human occupations might have been possible.

In the Caucasus the Endangered Persian leopard Panthera pardus saxicolor has been persecuted to the verge of extinction, primarily as a result of conflict with people over livestock predation. The socio-economic factors that influence this interaction have received little attention and the attitudes of local people towards leopards remain unknown. Here we assess the extent of cattle predation by leopards and how this influences people's attitudes towards leopards among village residents around the Dorfak No-Hunting Area, a priority reserve in the Iranian Caucasus. In a survey of 66 households, 48% of interviewees reported losing cattle to leopards during 2009–2011. A mean of c. 0.7 head of cattle per interviewed household was reportedly killed by leopards over the 3-year survey period. Cattle predation peaked during warm seasons, when most family members were busy with rice farming-related activities, thus leaving their cattle grazing unguarded in the forest. Regardless of the intensity of cattle predation or socio-economic status, 80% of respondents perceived leopards as a pest, with 45% of interviewees expressing support for either licensed hunting or culling of the Dorfak leopards. We recommend that the Iranian government considers the financial consequences of livestock loss for poor rural communities across the leopard's range. In addition, a combination of different livestock husbandry practices, with the direct involvement of local residents, is essential to ensure the long-term survival of the regional leopard population of the Caucasus.

The strategic significance of the Dariali Gorge, the main pass across the central Caucasus, has long been recognised. It forms a border today as it has done for much of the past 2000 years. But how was an effective military force sustained in an isolated Alpine environment? Excavations, osteoarchaeology and landscape survey have revealed that the Early Middle Ages saw as much investment in controlling this key route as there was in Antiquity. Guarded by the same Muslim-led garrison for at least a quarter of a millennium, its survival in a harsh environment was made possible through military effort and long-distance food supplies.

This article sheds light on the Euro-Atlantic discourse in Georgia by situating it in a wider frame. It provides an analysis of its Euro-Atlantic orientation by presenting it as a continuation of past efforts to involve European powers in Georgian affairs and highlights changing trends in this aspect of contemporary foreign policy. Far from determining whether or not the Georgians are European, the different arguments that have been used to support Georgian “Europeanness” are evaluated to assess its role in the national identity construction process. Focusing primarily on the United National Movement government led by Mikheil Saakashvili, we demonstrate how the Euro-Atlantic discourse has been employed domestically by the political elite as a legitimacy management strategy and explore its function in seeking Western patronage, a key foreign policy goal.

Terraced field systems are a feature of many regions of the world and have been dated as early as 6000 cal BC in the Levant (Kuijt et al. in Antiquity 81 (2007: 106–18)). The discovery of agricultural terraces in the northern Caucasus, reported here, extends their distribution into a new area. Relatively low population levels in the late medieval and early modern periods have preserved several blocks of terraced fields, some of them created at the beginning of the first millennium BC, others in the mid first millennium AD. The earlier terraced fields, associated with material and settlements of the Koban culture, culminated in over-exploitation of the land and exacerbated erosion during environmental change in the mid first millennium BC. The later series of terraced fields are of different form and are associated with the settlement in the area of communities of Alans in the first millennium AD. They largely avoided the areas rendered infertile by Koban period overexploitation. The morphology and chronology of the terraced field systems are explored using a combination of aerial photography, GIS analysis and field investigations.