KURA-ARAS KÜLTÜRÜ'NÜN ERZURUM BÖLGESİ'NDEKİ GELİŞİM SÜRECİ

Abstract

The Kura-Araxes Culture, which substantially signposted the Early Bronze Ages of the North Highland Zone of the Ancient Near East, still has many disguises, despite its one hundred years of research history. The main reasons for this are the scope of regional investigations (there are still many unknown sub-regions in the Kura-Araxian Geography) and the lack of cooperation between these projects. Regionalism is a distinguishing feature of this cultural complex, which continued for more than one thousand years and has distinctive pottery, architectural and settlement pattern traditions. To prevent the dynamics of the Kura-Araxes Culture from becoming ineffectual, and its chronological and geographical supremacy going largely unrecognised, we need more regional projects and their results. In this essay I propose to examine the role of the Erzurum region, which is central to the geography of the Kura-Araxes Culture, in the light of older and more recent archaeological investigations in this region. As the most recent research has demonstrated, the Erzurum Region has been placed at the heartland of the Kura-Araxes Culture, where it has emerged and developed. In spite of its rich archaeological potential, it is still not well known archaeologically. The unsatisfactory archaeological research which has been focused on the Erzurum and Pasinler plains should have presented striking results concerning regional archaeology and our subject the Kura-Araxes Culture. These regional investigations began with the sounding on Karaz Hoyuk at the beginning of 1940's and continued with only one seasonal excavation on Guzelova and Pulur Hoyuk in the I960's. They are very early and important projects in terms of regional archaeology, and the results of these early excavations have been re-evaluated within the scope of a project which was undertaken between 2000 and 2005, during which a sounding on Pulur Hoyuk, and surveys on the Erzurum and Pasinler plains, were conducted. This field work presented striking results concerning the development process of the Kura-Araxes Culture. Surely the key project for the Erzurum Region has been the Sos excavation, which has proposed a regional chronology as well as responses to the main questions concerning the Kura-Araxes Culture. Apart from these there have been a series of archaeological projects. But none of them have been able to contribute any valuable understanding of the development of the Kura-Araxes Culture in the Erzurum Region. The main aim of this essay is to discuss in detail the place and role of the Erzurum Region in the development of the Kura-Araxes Culture, which is one of the greatest cultural phenomenon of Near Eastern Archaeology.