The Archaeology of Collapse in Azerbaijan and Eastern Anatolia at During the Iron Age

Abstract

Knowledge, analysis and review of rise and fall of civilizations are one of the equivocal and tremendous topics with which the experts have dealt. Those factors that may influence in collapse of human communities are as follows: Human, economic, social, cultural and environmental factors. In some cases, natural disasters such as tsunami, earthquake, wide fire, and climatic changes and also on some occasions other factors including military invasion, attacks by barbarian and wild tribes, oppression of owners of power as well as civil revolts and ethnic-tribal problems may lead to civilization collapse. Iron Age covers time period (1500-500BC) in Iranian archeology when human could extract iron metal and use it from more production, the sites in Iron Age have been formed by production of grey potteries and use of iron-made tools. The present essay is intended to give answer to this effective question by means of descriptive- analytical method that at what scale the influential factors have occurred and how collapse and destruction took place in areas of Azerbaijan during Iron Age (Northwest of Iran and Eastern Anatolia). The results of this study show that the large areas such as Hasanlu, Dinkha Tepe, and Bastam and even regions of monarchical government of Urartian Empire in Eastern Turkey (Ayanis, Norshun-Tepe, Kayalidere, Altintepe, Yoncatepe and so on) have been demolished due to sudden accident and conflagration during this period and they have been diminished from scene of time.