Uno sguardo a Nord-Est

Abstract

Archaeological work carried out in the Southern Caucasus and in Eastern Turkey during the last three decades added some important elements to the picture of these two areas during the Late Bronze Age and contributed to defining their relations between each other and those with the main political entities of the Near East. Excavations in the Southern Caucasus, e.g. at Gegharot in Armenia and at Aradetis Orgora in Georgia, showed that the region was involved in the exchange network that was in place in the Near East during the Late Bronze Age, in which it is most likely that the populations of Eastern Anatolia played a key role in linking the Southern Caucasus with the area of Greater Mesopotamia. This hypothesis could be partially confirmed by the discovery of South-Caucasian LBA pottery during the excavations of Sos Höyük, a site located in the Erzurum area. In this context a combined approach to the study of these relations, which takes advantage of both archaeological evidence and contemporary epigraphic sources on the area, can prove very useful. Epigraphic sources consist almost entirely of Hittite and Middle-Assyrian texts because these two regional powers came in contact with the population of Eastern Anatolia during the expansion of their sphere of influence respectively eastwards and northwards.