Human settlement in the highlands of southern Caucasus during Chalcolithic and Bronze Age through archeozoology, stable isotopes and cementochronology
Résumé
The exploitation of montane ecosystems by agro-pastoral communities has played an important role in the development of these
societies in the Caucasus. Mountains can be constraining in winter as snow prevents access to pastures and constrains animal husbandry,
but they also provide access to natural resources such as copper ores, obsidian and pastures. As human occupation in the
Caucasus mountains is still very little studied, the archaeozoological approach makes it possible to test the hypothesis that zootechnical
innovations have led to a more substantial implementation of human communities in the montane ecosystems. The study
of faunal remains makes it possible to account for the species that has been exploited (domestic or wild). Cementochronological
analyses of herbivores teeth will allow us to determine the seasons of occupation of the sites. Finally, it will be possible to investigate
pastoral mobility (horizontal, vertical, etc.), herd feeding (use of fodder) and births seasonality with isotopic ratio analyses in bioapatite (carbon, oxygen, strontium) and collagen (nitrogen, carbon). The first results from various Georgian Chalcolithic and Early
Bronze Age archaeological sites will be discussed in this presentation.