Project description
Stone tool use in the Leylatepe phenomenon of the Chalcolithic Caucasus
During the Chalcolithic period, Southwest Asia was at the onset of social complexity, marked by shifting economic dynamics and increased social differentiation. In the southern Caucasus, the Leylatepe cultural phenomenon likely played a key role in these processes by facilitating transregional transfers and contributing to the development of specialised crafts and trade networks. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the StoneCau project explores the socio-economic development in the Late Chalcolithic southern Caucasus, with a focus on the Leylatepe phenomenon. The project includes the first-ever functional use-wear analyses of ground stone tools from four Leylatepe sites in present-day Azerbaijan and Armenia. It delves into the daily lives, food choices, and technological preferences of Leylatepe communities and explores their connections with ancient Mesopotamia.
Objective
The project sheds light on socio-economic developments in the southern Caucasus during the Late Chalcolithic – a turning point on the pathway of human development, marked by the emergence of complex societies and early states within south-eastern Europe and south-western Asia. The study focuses on the nature and origins of the Leylatepe cultural phenomenon, which conveyed new trajectories in social differentiation, specialized craft industries, and interregional product exchange within the southern Caucasus and likely beyond, into the northern Caucasus, eastern Anatolia, and Syro-Mesopotamia. Despite that, the current state of research on the phenomenon is troubled by a narrow scope of reliable fieldwork data, lack of well-dated contexts, and publication scarcity.
The research is based on the analysis of ground stone tools retrieved from four sites located in present-day Azerbaijan and Armenia: Alkhantepe, Leylatepe, Janavartepe, and Teghut, which emerged as Leylatepe settlements at the onset of the Late Chalcolithic period, in different environmental settings. Late prehistoric ground stone tools remain greatly underinvestigated, even though they were integral to various subsistence and craft-related activities of agro-pastoral villages in transition to social complexity. An integrative approach is employed, encompassing complementary (microwear, experimental, technological, contextual) methods of functional analyses of the tools. The high-resolution excavations of German Archaeological Institute (Berlin) and the Institute of Archaeology, Ethnography and Anthropology (Baku) at Leylatepe and Janavartepe grant an unprecedented insight into the phenomenon. The project is designed to tap into that potential and, consequently, it will be the first to yield insights into daily lives, food choices, and technological preferences of the Leylatepe phenomenon, illuminating socio-economic dynamics within the Caucasian communities and their interactions with ancient Mesopotamia.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities history and archaeology history ancient history
- social sciences sociology anthropology
- humanities history and archaeology archaeology
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01
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14195 Berlin
Germany
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