Pre History - the archaeology of the ancient Near East · PreHistoryPodcast

Episode 25: The Neolithic Comes to Transcaucasia

·43 min·2 clips

Transcaucasia may have produced the world's earliest grape wine after domesticated grape pips appeared around 6,000 cal BCE.

1. Prehistory: The Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Episode 25, traces the Neolithic's arrival in Transcaucasia after more than 3,000 years of local hunting and gathering. 2. Host Jane Gastra compares eastern Anatolia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and northern Iran to explain how regional archaeology reconstructs this transition. 3. The episode asks whether the first farming villagers descended from Triletian Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, migrated from Mesopotamia or Anatolia, or formed a mixture of populations. 4. Triletian Mesolithic groups appeared around 11,000 or 10,000 BCE and continued mobile lifeways until about 6,000 cal BCE, using caves, rock shelters, obsidian, and microlithic bladelets. 5. Their diets included wild plants, deer, wild boar, and bear, while butchery marks suggest bears were often skinned without being dismembered for meat. 6. Farming villages belonged broadly to the Shuleveri Shomtepe culture, named after Shuleveris Gora in Georgia and Shomtepe in Azerbaijan, but displayed three regional patterns. 7. Central, eastern, and southern groups built roughly one-hectare villages of tightly clustered round or oval houses, while hunted animals contributed about 10% of consumed meat. 8. Central Transcaucasian houses measured about 2.5 to 5 meters across, used mudbrick, storage bins, hearths, and narrow doorways, and may have had domed or timber-supported roofs. 9. Domesticated grape pips appear at multiple Southern Caucasus sites alongside wild grape pips, while pottery shifted from mineral temper toward chaff temper during the sixth millennium BCE. 10. Listeners interested in ancient history, archaeology, farming, and early technology.

As heard by us

A careful look at Transcaucasian villages, where walls, floors, and animal traces reveal Neolithic settlement patterns.

Transcaucasia comes into sharp focus in this Neolithic episode, as the story moves from the mountains, foothills, and valleys of eastern Anatolia into the southern Caucasus.

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Want to walk eastern Anatolia and Transcaucasia through round houses, beaten-clay floors, red ochre traces, and hints of animal stables?

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