The expansion of the Kura-Araxes culture in Iran: what role for the Uruk?

Abstract

International audience ; The interpretation of the expansion of the Kura-Araxes culture has been traditionally linked to a set of migratory mechanisms that were generated in the core of Kura-Araxes cultural region. Little attention has been dedicated to the role of other processes that took place in the Kura-Araxes "periphery", and in particular to the development, in the fourth millennium, of centralised early-state polities in Iran and Anatolia that were linked to similar developments taking place in the greater Uruk Mesopotamia. This paper will present two case-studies to highlight the structural premises that may have favored the Kura-Araxes "expansion" in Iran and Anatolia: Godin Tepe and Arslantepe. Between the late-fourth and the early-third millennium, these two sites recorded a strikingly similar cultural sequence consisting of the construction of large, possibly public, buildings characterized by a Uruk-related material culture that were replaced by an occupation of flimsy wattle and daub huts featuring a Kura-Araxes related material-culture. A thorough comparison of the developments illustrated by these two case-studies can suggest a new explanatory model for the Kura-Araxes expansion in the regions formerly involved in the Uruk "world". According to this model, the specialized pastoral groups that were generated by the centralised economies of the early-sate polities of the Uruk period in Iran and Anatolia may have played a key role in the following expansion of the Kura-Araxes culture in these regions. L'interprétation de l'expansion de la culture Kuro-Araxe a été traditionnellement associée à des mécanismes migratoires générés dans son périmètre géographique. Jusqu'à présent, très peu d'attention a été dédiée au rôle que d'autres processus, qui se sont déroulés aux marges de la région Kuro-Araxe, pourraient avoir joué dans cette expansion, notamment, le développement en Iran et en Anatolie d'entités proto-étatiques centralisées datant de la seconde moitié du IV e millénaire en connexion directe ...