Upper Euphrates Societies and Non-Sedentary Communities Linked to the Kura-Araxes World. Dynamics of Interaction, as seen from Arslantepe

This paper offers to the debate new perspectives on the relationships linking the Upper Euphrates sedentary and centralised communities with Northern Anatolian and Kura-Araxes mobile groups at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BCE. New perspectives arise from new data recently obtained at Arslantepe-Malatya by excavating VIB period levels in the upper part of the mound. These levels, laying on the ruins of the 4th millennium palatial complex and forming a sequence of superimposed settlements of different nature and consistence, reveal a series of dramatic events following the collapse of the Late Chalcolithic centralised system. Though marking a radical change in the structure and political organization of the Arslantepe society, these new settlements interestingly show more elements of continuity than previously thought, and suggest the possible occupation of the site by various components (pastoral and agricultural, nomadic and sedentary), probably already living in the plain and the surrounding mountains since the Chalcolithic, which seem to have interacted each other to maintain the control of the site and continue using it as their main centre and landmark. The nomadic components show to have had close connections with groups moving along the northern belt of Anatolian mountains and form part with them of the wide circuit of the Kura-Araxes cultures.