On salt, copper and gold

An international conference focused on the beginnings of mining and metallurgy
in the Caucasus was organised in Tbilisi in June 16th-19th 2016 under the
auspices of the National Museum of Georgia. This conference, which was funded
by the Agence nationale de la recherche (France) and the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany), aimed at discussing the intricate
relationships between the emergence of mining and metallurgy, and the shaping
of late prehistoric societies in south-western Asia. The Caucasus is renowned
in Near Eastern archaeology for its wealth in natural resources, in particular
in metal ores: for decades, scholars have surmised a specific causal
relationships between the rise of complex, hierarchical societies in the
Near‐East and the development of extractive metallurgy. Metallurgy, however,
is only the most visible part of the story that accounts for the dramatic
changes perceptible in south‐western Asia in the course of the 5th millennium
BCE. Early mining, which is not restricted to metal-ore mining, certainly also
had an impact in terms of economic networks, social dynamics, settlement
patterns and regional integration, not only across the Caucasus, but also in
the ancient Near and Middle East. Drawing on these fundamental questions, this
book explores the socio-economic, technological and environmental background
that favoured the rise of systematic mining and extractive metallurgy in the
Caucasus at the end of the Chalcolithic. How far was early mining linked to
the spread of specific subsistence strategies such as pastoral herding? Were
mined resources mainly intended for local consumption or distributed
throughout the Near East, towards Anatolia, Iran or Mesopotamia? Here are some
of the issues that are discussed in the present volume, which contains 21
articles written by some of the most eminent specialists in Caucasian
archaeology.