A multi-disciplinary research project in the Aras Valley, Armenia, focuses on the remains of the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age settlement of Metsamor. The results challenge prior understandings of the settlement's past and the role it played in the region, especially during the first centuries of the first millennium BC.

Recent survey work in western Azerbaijan has revealed that hilltop fortresses of the Bronze Age and Iron Age may have been parts of larger walled complexes and could have functioned as the urban centres of small independent polities. On the Şərur Plain long lengths of stone wall link the major fortress Oğlanqala it to its smaller neighbour Qızqala 1, with evidence of a substantial settlement on the lower ground between the two. The southern Caucasus lies beyond the core area of Near Eastern states but these new discoveries suggest that major centres of power arose here, controlling both the fertile plains and strategic trade routes through mountainous terrain.

The discovery of a crushed golden bowl in the remains of the Iron Age citadel of Hasanlu in 1958 attracted considerable media attention at the time. The circumstances of its loss have long remained unclear, but were clearly associated with the violent destruction of the site in c. 800 BC. Detailed review of the find context and the skeletons found nearby now suggests that the bowl was being looted during the sack of the citadel by Urartian soldiers from an upper room where weapons, armour and fine metal vessels were stored. The enemy soldiers carrying off the Gold Bowl died in the attempt when the upper floors of the building collapsed, plunging them to their deaths.