On the cultural geography of the Eastern Caucasus and Southern Caspian in the Mesolithic

This study focuses on the geography of Mesolithic cultures of the eastern Caucasus and the current approaches to this issue. In the 1970s, the Caucasian Mesolithic was considered an amalgam of several archaeological cultures evolving in parallel. In the eastern part of that region, two archaeological cultures were described, Chokh and Trialeti. While no one questioned their marked specificity vis-a-vis the cultures of western Caucasus, the similarities and differences between themselves have not been addressed specially. In the 1990s, S.K. Kozlowski proposed to merge Chokh and Trialeti with other Mesolithic cultures of the northern Zagros, Anatolia, western Caucasus, Crimea, southern and eastern Caspian, and possibly the Central Iranian Plateau into a single industry, which he termed "Trialetien ”. This idea was based on approaches different from those used in establishing archaeological cultures. Therefore, the notion ofTrialetien was likewise novel. I believe that former typological criteria underlying the typology of the southern part of the circum-Caspian area (Chokh, Trialeti, Balakhan) are still valid. Likewise plausible is the idea that in addition to the cultures mentioned above, the Southern Caspian archaeological culture must be established. All those local units, including Trialeti (in the traditional sense), are a group of related cultures, which I previously included in the "Southern Caspian Mesolithic area”.