The Problem of the Origination of Statehood in the North-Eastern Caucasus in the Epoch of Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages

Abstract

The North-Eastern Caucasus, which includes the territories of the modern Chechen Republic and the Republic of Dagestan, is one of the oldest centers of the manufacturing economy in the Old World. The development of productive forces and production relations over several millennia, expressed in vivid monuments of material culture, starting from the Kura-Araxes Eneolithic culture, inevitably led to the socio-political evolution of society, the emergence of early forms of statehood or the inclusion of these societies in various kinds of military-political alliances. Numerous Nakh (ancestors of modern Chechens, Ingush and Batsbi) and Dagestan tribes were actively involved in such unions, and the territory of their settlement was partly or completely included at different times in the early state associations that arose in adjacent territories. Such early polities include the Ancient Georgian Kingdom (Iberia) and Caucasian Albania of the late antiquity, the Alanian Kingdom and the Khazar Khaganate of the early Middle Ages, known from written sources.