Settlement mound Tepecik and the Karaz culture in Eastern Anatolia
Abstract
The longevity of the Kura-Araxes culture is an archaeological phenomenon in the Caucasus and Near East. Over the course of a millennium, this culture spread from its origins in Eastern Anatolia, the Transcaucasia and northwest Iran to Southeastern Anatolia, northern Syria, Palestine and Israel. Named after the settlement mound Karaz near Erzurum, the Karaz culture is a widely established Turkish term for the Kura-Araxes culture. In Palestine and Israel, this culture is called Khirbet-Kerak. Apart from the striking small finds and special architectural features, it has a special pottery with characteristics that remained almost uniform in its area of distribution. Situated in the Altınova plain in Eastern Anatolia, Tepecik was also home for this significant culture. Today, this settlement mound lies under the waters of the Keban Dam in Elazığ. Yet its strategic location on a tributary of the Euphrates enabled the emergence and development of various cultures. At this settlement, archaeologists documented the Karaz culture that occurred in an almost unbroken cultural sequence from the Late Chalcolithic up to the beginnings of the Middle Bronze Age. Thus, Tepecik is one of the most significant prehistoric settlements within the distribution area of the Kura-Araxes/Karaz/Khirbet Kerak culture in the Near East. This paper presents the Karaz pottery from Tepecik as well as the possible development of the Karaz culture in the course of the Early Bronze Age at this settlement.
.
Downloads
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors are confirming that they are the authors of the submitting article, which will be published (print and online) in journal Documenta Praehistorica by Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani (University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Aškerčeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia). Author’s name will be evident in the article in journal. All decisions regarding layout and distribution of the work are in hands of the publisher.
- Authors guarantee that the work is their own original creation and does not infringe any statutory or common-law copyright or any proprietary right of any third party. In case of claims by third parties, authors commit their self to defend the interests of the publisher, and shall cover any potential costs.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.