Communities on the move: a preliminary report on the 2021-22 archaeological work of the Ganja Region Kurgan Archaeological Project

For the communities of the southern Caucasus, the Kura River has been a fundamental resource for stimulating communication within this broad and geographically fragmented landscape, but also for supporting the economic subsistence of the people living here. In western Azerbaijan, this is clearly evident through the observation of the archaeological data available from the so-called Kura-Araxes period (c. 3600-2500 BCE) as well as for the Late Bronze/Iron Age periods (c. 1500-600 BCE). Accordingly, the Azerbaijan-Italian archaeological project in western Azerbaijan has focused its attention on analysing how the archaeological relics left behind by the communities inhabiting this region during the previously mentioned periods can be interpreted as part of a transforming socio-economical pattern within which the interaction between mobility and sedentarisation was more complex than previously conceived. In particular, the project aims are: to reconstruct the funerary landscape of the Kura-Araxes communities inhabiting the Uzun Rama plateau (in the Goranboy province) through a detailed investigation of the kurgans (i.e., funerary mounds) of this specific period; to analyse a Late Bronze Age and Iron Age site, Tava Tepe (in the Aǧstafa district), that represents, for this specific period, a unique example of an unfortified settlement characterised by the presence of huts with clear evidence of specialised production activities (i.e. kilns and slags, mortars and grinding stones, areas for metal productions) that testifies to a high level of social complexity.