Pivoting East

Çadır Höyük, Transcaucasia, and Complex Connectivity in the Late Chalcolithic

Abstract

The investigation of ‘complex connectivities’ as defined by Tomlinson (1999) as a critical element in the understanding of how modern globalization works has been repurposed by archaeologists as a model to explain the mechanisms at work in the archaeological past. This study applies Tomlinson’s model to interpret evidence that such connectivities linked the vast Uruk system in Mesopotamia, the contemporary Kura-Araxes culture in Transcaucasia, and the north central Anatolian plateau in the second half of the fourth millennium BCE, known as the Late Chalcolithic period. We focus on the site of Çadır Höyük, on the north central Anatolian plateau. The occupants of this rural settlement experienced some dramatic changes in the later fourth millennium, including substantial reorganization of their village plan, expansions and contractions in socioeconomic activity and long-distance trade, more elaborate burials, and possibly the evolution of new sociopolitical and religious ideologies. Here we explore the increasing evidence that socioeconomic ‘complex connectivity,’ with both Mesopotamia and especially Transcaucasia, played some role in the substantial modifications and internal dynamics at Late Chalcolithic Çadır Höyük.