The Archaeology of Imperial Landscapes

Abstract

Aeschylus famously described the Caucasus as the prison where Prometheus was shackled for rebelling against an autocratic Zeus and stealing fire, and hence the arts of civilization, from the gods to give to humankind (Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound). But Prometheus was only the first prisoner of the Caucasus. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, alongside Russian intervention into this area, poets, novelists, and composers, including Mikhail Lermontov, Alexander Pushkin, and Lev Tolstoy, transformed this trope into a commen tary on the Russian Empire (Hokanson 1994; Layton 1994;Hokanson 2008;Grant 2009). In Tolstoy's story, the prisoner is a Russian soldier named Zhilin, captured by the Circassian resistance, who makes friends with a local girl, Dina, who ultimately frees him (Tolstoy 2009(Tolstoy [1872). Ignorant of the language of his captors, the soldier communicates through objects, making clay dolls for Dina. The same is true of Dina, who cements their relationship through gifts of food.This story highlights the materiality of empires: the way that complex imperial relations are often enacted through things, something which has been recognized ethnographically (Thomas 1991). In Tolstoy's story, and in nine teenth century Russian empire building, negotiation, violence, and resistance were the main vectors of imperial interaction. We can see the same general processes at work in the Caucasus in the Middle Iron Age (MIA, ca. 800-600 BCE), when Urartu (860-640 BCE) was consolidating its empire. I will