Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Trialetian

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Dates
  
c. 14000 – c. 6000 BCE

Followed by
  
Nemrikian culture

Preceded by
  
Baradostian culture

Period
  
Mesolithic

Trialetian

Major sites
  
Trialeti, Shanidar Cave, Huto and Kamarband Caves, Kotias Klde

Trialetian is the name for an Upper Paleolithic-Epipaleolithic stone tool industry from the area south of the Caucasus Mountains and to the northern Zagros Mountains. It is tentatively dated to the period between 14,000 / 11,000 BCE and 6,000 BCE. The name of the archaeological culture derives from sites in the district of Trialeti in south Georgian Khrami river basin. These sites include Barmaksyzkaya and Edzani-Zurtaketi,. In Edzani, an Upper Paleolithic site, a significant percentage of the artifacts are made of obsidian.

The Caucasian-Anatolian area of Trialetian culture was adjacent to the Iraqi-Iranian Zarzian culture to the east and south as well as the Levantine Natufian to the southwest. Alan H. Simmons describes the culture as "very poorly documented". In contrast, recent excavations in the Valley of Qvirila river, to the north of the Trialetian region, display a Mesolithic culture. The subsistence of these groups were based on hunting Capra caucasica, wild boar and brown bear.

Literature

  • Olivier Aurenche, Philippe Galet, Emmanuelle Régagnon-Caroline, Jacques Évin: Proto-Neolithic and Neolithic Cultures in the Middle East – the Birth of Agriculture, Livestock Raising, and Ceramics: A Calibrated 14C Chronology 12, 500-5500 cal BC, in: Near East Chronology: Archaeology and Environment. Radiocarbon 43,3 (2001) 1191–1202. (online, PDF)
  • Stefan Karol Kozlowski: The Trialetian “Mesolithic” industry of the Caucasus, Transcaspia, Eastern Anatolia, and the Iranian Plateau. In: Stefan Karol Kozłowski, Hans Georg Gebel (ed.): Neolithic chipped stone industries of the Fertile Crescent, and their contemporaries in adjacent regions., Studies in Early Near Eastern Production, Subsistence and Environment 3, Berlin 1996, pg. 161–170.
  • References

    Trialetian Wikipedia