Tsaghkahovit
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Tsaghkahovit Ծաղկահովիտ |
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| State : |
 Armenia
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| Province : | Aragazotn | ||
| Coordinates : | 40 ° 38 ' N , 44 ° 13' E | ||
| Height : | 2224 m | ||
| Residents : | 2,139 (2012) | ||
| Time zone : | UTC + 4 | ||
| Community type: | Rural community | ||
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Tsaghkahovit ( Armenian Ծաղկահովիտ ), other transcriptions Tsakhkaovit, Tsakahovit , until 1946 Haji Khalil , is a small town and rural community ( hamaynkner ) in the north Armenian province of Aragazotn .
Inhabited settlements have been excavated on the hills on the outskirts since 1998 from the Early Bronze Age (from 3200 BC) to the time after the fall of the Urartian Empire (7th to 5th centuries BC). A citadel on the top of the hill, three sites with residential buildings below the hill and a cemetery 400 meters away came to light.
location
The place Tsaghkahovit is located on the grass-covered plateau of the same name at an altitude of 2224 meters on the northern foothills of the Aragaz , the highest mountain in the country at 4090 meters. In the north, the plain interspersed with flat hills is bordered by the Pambak mountain range, which reaches an altitude of over 3000 meters. The maximum 15 to 20 kilometers wide Tsaghkahovit plateau ("plane of flowers") is the highest of the three levels at the foothills of the Aragaz at over 2000 meters. In the west it gradually merges into the approximately 1,500 meter high level of Shirak, while the connection to the Ararat level in the south is made through the gorge of the Kassagh on the east side of the Aragaz. Geologically, it forms a hollow between the mountains that is enclosed on all sides and filled with volcanic and alluvial sediments to a thickness of several hundred meters .
There are only a few agricultural hamlets and farms on the sparsely populated highlands. Winters are long and cold, apart from the mostly dry months of July and August, year-round rainfall is likely. The snow fields on the summit of Aragaz, which are also present in midsummer, ensure that plenty of water flows down the slopes in small streams all year round. In contrast, the slopes of the lower Pambak chain are drier in summer. The grassy areas on the hills are used as pastures for sheep, goats and cattle. Mainly potatoes, white cabbage and maize thrive on the large-parceled fields of the plain.
From the M1 , between Yerevan and Gyumri circles the Aragaz the south and west, branches in the small town of Maralik the street H21 to the east, crossed Artik and leads north of Aragaz through the plane of Tsaghkahovit and reached after 40 kilometers the hamlet Alagyaz . Here the H21 joins the M3 . The M3 is another expressway from Yerevan via Ashtarak and Aparan on the east side of the Aragaz to the north over a 2378 meter high pass to Spitak . Six kilometers west of Alagyaz a cul-de-sac branches off to the south, which ends after one kilometer in Tsaghkahovit.
history
Around the middle of the 4th millennium BC A uniform culture began to spread in the South Caucasus and the Armenian highlands , whose influence extended to western Iran and Palestine and which is known as the Kura Araxes culture . It consisted of a sedentary, agricultural population who lived in adobe buildings in the fertile valleys. In Armenia, the most important sites - including Dvin - are in the Ararat plain, which is part of today's Ararat province . Towards the end of the Kura-Araxes culture in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC Higher mountain regions were also settled. A colored ceramic that now appears in the same layer as the previous black polished ceramic shows that a new culture must have gradually invaded. Apparently a troubled time began in the second half of the 3rd millennium, because the previously unfortified settlements in the valley plains such as Mokhrablur and Schengavit were now surrounded by a wall and new fortified settlements were mainly built in remote mountain regions.
The four related cultures with colored pottery were common in large parts of the Armenian highlands; According to their localities, these include the cultures of Karmir Berd in the province of Aragazotn (eponymous locality near Yerevan) and Sevan-Userlik (on Lake Sevan ). Instead of farming in the Kura Araxes culture, livestock was the preferred form of farming in the Middle Bronze Age and rectangular buildings took the place of round houses (Metsamor).
At the transition to the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (15th to 9th centuries BC) the first state-like structures and social hierarchies emerged. The larger settlements grew around central monumental buildings in the 14th and 13th centuries; in the vicinity of Mount Aragaz, these were in particular Metsamor, Aragaz, Shamiram, Horom, Oshakan , Talin and Tsaghkahovit, as well as Lchaschen (on the north bank of Lake Sevan) and Udabno (near the Dawit Gareja monastery in eastern Georgia). In the Late Bronze Age, a network of fortified cities was built on mountain slopes and on hilltops, which were walled in by Cyclopean stone blocks up to seven meters high.
The main towns with cyclopean fortresses on the Tsaghkahovit plateau were next to Tsaghkahovit Hnaberd, a village ten kilometers west near the road to Artik, and Gegharot on the M3, a few kilometers northwest of Alagyaz. A total of eleven Late Bronze Age fortresses are known to cover an area of 20 × 25 kilometers; between Tsaghkahovit and Hnaberd, which is also south of the road on the foothills of the Aragaz, there are numerous burial grounds on the surface. The plain itself has not yet been subjected to a survey because the arable land and a colluvium layer hardly allow archaeological findings. Not all of the localized settlements, but at least Tsaghkahovit and Hnaberd coexisted in the 13th and 12th centuries.
While in the grave chambers of the late Bronze Age burial ground near Dilijan ("Redkin camp") from the 13th century only very few iron weapon parts were found, which were obviously reserved for the rulers, iron processing increased towards the end of the 12th century in the Armenian highlands . In the 11th century iron weapons and tools had become used articles in all classes of the population.
In the Early Iron Age there was a hierarchically structured aristocratic society with considerable social differences, which was organized in small, state-like structures. This was shown by the analysis of the grave goods and the ceramic finds in the area of the Tsaghkahovit housing estate. Divided according to their intended use, smaller bowls were found inside the citadel and large storage vessels ( pithoi ) mainly in the housing estates below. The very existence of a fortress compared to the other settlement areas indicates a distinction between nobility and subordinates.
In Armenia and Eastern Georgia there must have been uncertain times in the 13th and 12th centuries with rapid cultural changes in individual places. For example, the Katnalikhevi settlement two kilometers south of Mtskheta and probably also Samadlo west of Mtskheta and Treli in the urban area of Tbilisi , which belonged to the Trialeti culture, were suddenly abandoned in the 12th century. Correspondingly, 30 radiocarbon dates carried out by the ArAGATS project at the three main locations of the Tsaghkahovit plateau showed that fire disasters occurred at the same time around 1250 and 1150 in the fortress of Tsaghkahovit. A large part of the population from the abandoned settlements returned to a nomadic way of life. In Trialeti , 110 kilometers north of Tsaghkahovit, the population lived throughout the Early Iron Age until the 9th century BC. Predominantly nomadic. The only exception were the three settlements of Udabno (near the eastern Georgian monastery Dawit Gareja ), which were built in the 11th and 10th centuries BC. To be dated. The reason for Udabno's abandonment in the first half of the 1st millennium BC Chr. Is seen in an ecological catastrophe, which can be traced back to the deforestation of the forests. Large amounts of charcoal were required due to the intensive processing of iron ore in the vicinity.
Climatic deterioration is assumed to be the cause of the transition to nomadism in all cultures in the region. In Trialeti, as in the highlands on the Aragaz, there had been a dense network of large fortified settlements. In Tsaghkahovit, which was uninhabited for a long time, only one of the excavated graves dates from the 8th / 7th centuries. Century. During a new settlement phase in the Urartian period from the 9th to the 7th century BC In Eastern Georgia and Northern Armenia, the population lived partly as nomads and in smaller settlements that surrounded a Cyclopean fortress.
A chronological subdivision of the archaeological layers, whereby the Early Bronze Age, the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age III are best represented on the entire highlands:
- Early Bronze Age: Tsaghkahovit Ia: 3200–2900 BC Chr. Kura-Araxes I ( Jemdet-Nasr period )
- Early Bronze Age: Tsaghkahovit Ib: 2900–2600 BC Chr. Kura-Araxes II ( early Dynastic period )
- Late Bronze Age I: Tsaghkahovit IIa: 1500–1400 BC BC ( Mittani )
- Late Bronze Age II: Tsaghkahovit IIb: 1400–1300 BC BC ( Assyrian Empire )
- Late Bronze Age III: Tsaghkahovit IIc: 1300–1200 BC Chr.
- Iron Age IIIa: Tsaghkahovit IIIa: 650-350 BC BC ( Achaemenid Empire )
- Iron Age IIIb: Tsaghkahovit IIIb: 350–200 BC BC ( Hellenism )
exploration
No written certificates from pre-Urartian times have survived in the region. The first written finds depend on the expansion of the Urartians in the 9th and 8th centuries BC. Together. The Urartian king Argišti I (ruled around 785–753) led - probably coming from the north - 786 BC. A campaign against Eriachi (today Shirak ). This is evident from an inscription he left in marmashen . A Urartean inscription in the gorge of the Mantasch, a tributary of the Achurian, reports of further conquests when Argišti I roamed the Tsaghkahovit plateau on the march south. From the 2nd century BC An Aramaic inscription, which the Armenian King Artaxias I had placed on a stele, which was discovered in 1977 near Spitak, comes from the 4th century BC . For the six centuries in between there are no known inscriptions from the area around Tsaghkahovit.
The Georgian linguist Nikolai Marr gave the first report of Tsaghkahovit, Hnaberd, Gegharot and other fortresses on the plateau when he was exploring the area in 1893 while excavating in the medieval city of Ani . The Armenian art historian Toros Toramanian (1864-1934), published in 1942, provided a more detailed description . Toramanian, who was still involved in the work in Ani in 1914, compiled the first comprehensive catalog of the most important Armenian ruins, with a focus on the description of the medieval church buildings. Some researchers were briefly active in Tsaghkahovit each in the 1930s. The first excavations on the Tsaghkahovit plateau were carried out by Arutiun A. Martirosyan in 1956, when he uncovered five Late Bronze Age graves in Gegharot. Karapet Kafadaryan made the first topographic map of Tsaghkahovit in 1963/64.
The intensive archaeological investigation of Tsaghkahovit started in 1998 with the Armenian-American research project ArAGATS ( Archeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian States ) under the direction of Adam T. Smith of the University of Chicago and Ruben S. Badalyan of the Archaeological Institute in Yerevan . Since then, archaeologists have regularly carried out excavations in early summer, and the excavated fields are backfilled at the end of the season to protect them. The work of the team includes the surface investigation by inspection of an area of almost 100 square kilometers on the slope of the Aragaz. This is supplemented by evaluations of satellite images of the plain.
Townscape
In the early Soviet period in the first half of the 20th century, the plateau belonged to the administrative district of Spitak and was therefore oriented to the north. At a local government reform in 1972 the village Tsaghkahovit became the capital of the district Aragaz newly formed with an area of 382 square kilometers, extending from the top of Aragats to the village Lernapar in the north and of Geghadir the west to the Yezidi extended village Mirak in the east. At the 1986 census, the population of the district was 14,100. After Armenia gained independence in 1991, the Tsaghkahovit plateau was added to the Aragazotn province, the administrative center of which is Ashtarak in the south of the Aragaz. Because of the high unemployment after the closure of the industrial plants established in the Soviet era, many young residents have emigrated to Yerevan or tried to find work in Russia or in some cases in Europe or the USA.
In the 2001 census, the official population was 1706 and the de facto population was 1562. In January 2012, according to official statistics, there were officially 2139 inhabitants in Tsaghkahovit. The difference between the population designated as official and the actual population is related to the high proportion of seasonal workers who work away from home. The official unemployment figure for 2002 is only 7.5 percent. This is because all adult members within a family that owns land are registered as fully employed. Without this assumption, the percentage would be much higher. In 2002, the mayor of Tsaghkahovit expected about two-thirds of the employable population in his community to be unemployed. In view of the scarce employment opportunities, the employment of 25 to 40 seasonal workers through the ArAGATS project is worth mentioning.
Tsaghkahovit consists of two districts that can be distinguished according to their development. The access road coming from the north forms the main axis of the northern area, which is characterized by a good dozen apartment blocks and a few half-ruined industrial plants from the Soviet era. At the central intersection there are two shops for groceries and everyday goods. There is a modern church dedicated to Saint Gregory .
Separated from this urban-looking area with streets laid out at right angles, there is a residential area with a village character to the south, whose single-family houses and agricultural outbuildings covered with corrugated iron were built haphazardly on a narrow, winding road network. Cattle are kept in stables and vegetables such as beets and cabbage thrive in front gardens. In contrast to the damaged wide asphalt roads in the north, most of the narrow roads in the south are unpaved.
Excavation site
500 meters east of the central crossroads are the remains of the citadel on a 2183 meter high hill, which towers over the center of the village by around 80 meters and appears on some plans as Kalachi Tepe. The slopes of the fortress hill are roughly equally steep on all sides. The hill has an area of 7.59 hectares, the total excavation area covers 36.9 hectares. It extends in a depression up to a hill in the southeast. The 0.59 hectare citadel occupies the flat hilltop. From the citadel hill one can overlook the plateau in the north, the road leading up from Aparan in the east and the excavation area on the slope of the Aragaz in the south.
The enclosure wall of the fortress consisted of a shell of small and medium-sized field stones, which enclose a core of gravel. The facing sides of the stones were lightly processed for a reasonably smooth course of the stone rows. Several supporting pillars were used to reinforce the outside. On all sides of the hill, the slope has been terraced in several steps, as can be seen from a distance. Stones lying around at the foot of the hill are likely to have come from the partially collapsed terrace walls.
Below the citadel hill, a distinction is made between four settlement centers, which are in the south-west (district C), in the south (district A), in the east (east settlement) and a little further away beyond a bump in the south-east of the hill (district B). There is a burial ground on the eastern edge of the site. The southwest settlement consists of building structures, each with several interconnected rooms. Smaller buildings had three to five rectangular rooms. The largest building located farthest south consisted of at least 22 rooms. As far as can be seen so far, buildings with a larger space were built in the Ostsiedlung. As with the citadel, the masonry was double-shelled with a gravel filling. The southeastern settlement is probably a cohesive building complex with rooms of different sizes, the wall thickness of which was smaller.
The top layer of the settlement dates from the Middle Ages. 28 percent of the ceramics found on the western slope are dated to the Early Bronze Age, 80 percent of the total ceramics to the Late Bronze and Iron Ages I, and another five percent to the Iron Age III.
literature
- Lori Khatchadourian: Empire in the Everyday: A Preliminary Report on the 2008–2011 Excavations at Tsaghkahovit, Armenia. In: American Journal of Archeology, Vol. 118, No. 1, January 2014, pp. 137-169
- Jens Nieling: The introduction of iron technology in the South Caucasus and East Anatolia during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages . Aarhus University Press, Aarhus (Denmark) 2009
- Adam T. Smith, Ruben Badalyan, Pavel Avetisyan, Mkrtich Zardaryan, Armine Hayrapetyan, Leah Minc, Belinda Monahan: Early Complex Societies in Southern Caucasia: A Preliminary Report on the 2002 Investigations by Project ArAGATS on the Tsakahovit Plain, Republic of Armenia. In: American Journal of Archeology , Vol. 108, No. 1, January 2004, pp. 1-41
- Adam T. Smith, Ruben S. Baldayan, Pavel Avetisyan: The Foundations of Research and Regional Survey in the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia. (The Archeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies, Volume 1) The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2009
Web links
- Project ArAGATS: Archeology in the South Caucasus . Cornell University
- Rick Ney: Aragatsotn March . Tour Armenia, 2008, pp. 70f
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hakob Simonian: Prehistoric and early historical finds in the area of Armenia. In: Armenia. Rediscovery of an old cultural landscape . (Exhibition catalog) Museum Bochum 1995, pp. 41–47
- ↑ Jens Nieling, 2009, p. 139
- ^ Elisabeth Bauer-Manndorff: The early Armenia. Basics of archeology and prehistory. Publishing house of the Mechitaristen-Congregation, Vienna 1984, pp. 88, 96
- ^ Adam T. Smith, Ruben S. Baldayan, Pavel Avetisyan, 2009, pp. 30f
- ↑ Özgecan Yarma: Studies in Architecture and Reconstruction of Udabno III House D. Middle East Technical University, December 2009
- ↑ Konstantin Pizchelauri: A new ancient oriental culture of the Iron Age in the interior of the Caucasus. In: Anadolu Arastirmalari 14, 1996, pp. 425-437, here p. 429
- ↑ Jens Nieling, 2009, pp. 126f, 140
- ↑ Jens Nieling, 2009, pp. 184f
- ^ Adam T. Smith, Ruben S. Baldayan, Pavel Avetisyan, 2009, pp. 34, 99
- ^ Adam T. Smith, Ruben S. Baldayan, Pavel Avetisyan, 2009, p. 97
- ^ Adam T. Smith: Prometheus Unbound: Southern Caucasia in Prehistory. In: Journal of World Prehistory, 19 (4), 2005, pp. 229-279
- ^ Adam T. Smith, Ruben S. Baldayan, Pavel Avetisyan, 2009, p. 100
- ^ RA 2001 Population and Housing Census Results . armstat.am
- ^ RA Aragatsotn March. armstat.am, 2012
- ^ Adam T. Smith, Ruben S. Baldayan, Pavel Avetisyan, 2009, pp. 96f
- ^ Adam T. Smith, Ruben S. Baldayan, Pavel Avetisyan, 2009, pp. 324f