NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL PUBLICATIONS in GEORGIA VAKHTANG LICHELI Otar Lortqifanize, Zveli Qartuli Civilizaciis Sataveebtan

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NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL PUBLICATIONS IN GEORGIA

VAKHTANG LICHELI

Otar Lortqifanize, Zveli qartuli civilizaciis sataveebtan (The Sources of Ancient Georgian Civilization). Tbilisi, State University of Tbilisi, 2002, 338 pages, ISBN 99928-931-3-3 (In Georgian)

This book by the well-known Georgian archaeologist, who founded the Centre for Archaeological Research of the Georgian Academy of Sciences, Academician Otar Lordkipanidze, is a third revised and extended edition. The Russian version was published as far back as 1989 in Tbilisi under the title The Heritage of Ancient Georgia. The next edition appeared in Germany in German as Archäologie in Georgien. Von der Altsteinzeit zum Mittelalter (Weinheim, VCH, Acta Humaniora) in 1991. The Georgian edition has been revised and extended: archaeological material has been added and it now contains a review of the scholarly literature up to the year 2000. The book consists of an introduction and four chapters, illus- trations and – what is particularly important – an extended bibliography with 1717 titles and a virtually complete list of publications on Georgian archaeology in Georgian, Russian and other languages. Apart from the research which occupies the main part of the book, this additional section is particularly valu- able, since O. Lordkipanidze had been the first to collect and analyze works on all questions concerning Georgian archaeology. The introduction examines questions relating to the origin and ethno- linguistic history of the Georgians, written sources in Georgian and other languages; it also presents the reader with toponymic, onomastic, linguistic, ethnographic and archaeological data and information drawn from myths and folklore. This part of the book ends with a short historiographic review. The first chapter (The Beginning of History from Stone to Metal) is devoted to the Stone Age and divided into two sections: “Men of the Stone Age” and “The Neolithic Revolution – the first animal-breeders and tillers of the land”. In this chapter a good deal of space is set aside for the now internationally famous site of Dmanisi the age of which has been determined as going back

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1,800,000 years. An interesting picture is provided by the map showing the distribution of sites from that era within the territory of Georgia: 12 known sites of the Lower Palaeolithic (the Acheulian and Mousterian periods) and 18 of the Upper Palaeolithic period; 13 sites of the Mesolithic period and 28 of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in Western Georgia. A map is also provided showing the distribution of Early Farming sites. The second chapter examines questions connected with the Early Metal- working cultures, starting from the age of the Kuro-Araxes Culture through to the period of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age. We should now like to dwell in more detail on the thorough and compre- hensive exposition of questions connected with the history and archaeology of the 1st millennium BC. Academician Lordkipanidze – an outstanding special- ist in the Classical period – not only listed here the main questions connected with that age, but also presented the reader with a detailed study of the period, insofar as the size and aims of this volume would allow. His attention was drawn to such questions as for example: the emergence of the first state for- mations in Eastern Anatolia and in the basin of the Chorokhi River, Greek colonization, early contacts between the Aegean and Colchis, the interpretation of votive figures from the Late Geometric period, the emergence and devel- opment of the Colchian bronze working, traditions and innovations in the period characterized by close contacts with the Greek world on the one hand and the Achaemenid state on the other, the extent and nature of Hellenism in Georgia, questions concerning Roman expansion in the coastal area of Colchis and so on. Lordkipanidze’s examination of these questions is based not only on the latest archaeological finds available but also on written sources. These include Assyrian and Urartian cuneiform texts, early Greek literature and information drawn from the writings of Hellenistic and Roman authors. Archaeological sites relating to this period are presented in chronological order, which makes it easy for the reader not only to follow the logic under- lying the research carried out by Lordkipanidze, but also to reach an objective assessment of how the history and material culture of Georgia developed. In several cases the author provides a resumé of his previously published works and develops new ideas against a background of the latest discoveries. In his interesting research on the nature of hoards of bronze items from the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, for example, Lordkipanidze, starting out from a broad range of parallels, the topography of the finds concerned and the contents of the hoards, concludes that they were hoards of a votive nature. Another example