Archaeometallurgical Investigations in Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan: What Does the Evidence from Late Chalcolithic Ovçular Tepesi Tell Us about the Beginning of Extractive Metallurgy?

Extending the scale of obsidian studies: Towards a high‐resolution investigation of obsidian prehistoric circulation patterns in the southern Caucasus and north‐western Iran

“…But the breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1991 favoured the rise of several international multidisciplinary projects in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, which have considerably renewed our understanding of past Caucasian cultural dynamics, which may now be analysed from a much broader geographical, but also richer analytical, slant. The origin of several significant innovations in the Middle East has been reconsidered (i.e., extractive metallurgy; Gailhard et al 2017), and the agency of humble social groups, such as pastoral nomads, has been put forward to explain the diffusion of knowledge, raw materials (Gailhard in press) and possibly the circulation of goods towards the lowlands (Helwing in press). Among other consequences, these findings have questioned the common view according to which complex hierarchical societies had risen through mastering the art of metallurgy (Childe 1930;Wailes 1996).…”