User:Kober/sandbox/Prehistory of Georgia1

Prehistory of Georgia was shaped by the diversity of Caucasian landscapes and marked by a long and dynamic human history, resulting in a rich archaeological record. The first hominin occupation in the territory of what would become Georgia begins at Dmanisi with the cranial remains and the implements — including stone tools related to African behavior — found in association with it, which are dated to at 1.6–1.8 million years ago. An uninterrupted human presence in the territory of Georgia is archaeologically traceable to at least 500,000 years ago.

Parts of prehistoric Georgia, buffered by the Greater Caucasus mountains, served as one of the Last Glacial Maximum refugia and provided a corridor for Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic movements of anatomically modern humans, which significantly contributed to the genetic makeup of the populations of Europe and Central Asia. Neolithic farming cultures appeared, initially in a few river-bottom locations such as Shulaveri, around 6000 BC, succeeded by the Chalcolithic and its far-flung trade networks that extended to parts of the ancient Near East. The Early Bronze Age Kura–Araxes culture (c. 3500–2500 BC) — a settled, nonhierarchical, and agropastoral society dominating Georgia's east and south — was replaced by more mobile kurgan cultures (c. 2500–1700 BC), such as that of Trialeti, distinguished by large burial mounds with rich inventories, an indication of the emergence of a small elite and social inequality. Significant evidence relates also to early adoption of wine-making and gold-mining. In the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age (c. 1700–800 BC), several homogeneous local traditions were formed as there was a shift from semi-nomadic pastoralism to a more structured and highly hierarchical society with an emphasis on militarism as suggested by the proliferation of weaponry and fortresses, as well as archaeological indication of interpersonal violence.

Unlike eastern Georgia, the country's western portion, bathed by the Black Sea, was largely a cultural continuum from the Early Bronze Age on, culminating in the Colchian culture (c. 2700–600 BC), with its advanced bronze and then iron metallurgy. By the 6th-5th centuries BC, the territory of Georgia became an increasingly dynamic part of a growing ecumene, enhanced by the Greek settlement on the eastern Black Sea coastline and expansion of the Achaemenid Empire, with visible imprint on local architecture and craftsmanship. By that time, with the appearance of several more or less reliably identifiable ethnic and geographic names in the ancient Near Eastern and Greek literary sources, archaic Georgia gradually moved into the scope of recorded history. The Greeks became more closely familiar with western Georgia as Colchis, which had entered their imagination as the land of mythic wealth. There is no explicit mention of eastern Georgia — subsequently known as Iberia to the Greco-Roman world — in the contemporary written sources before the 1st century BC, but semi-legendary early medieval Georgian accounts of the emergence of native kingship there in the early Hellenistic period mark the beginning of an uninterrupted historical memory of the Georgian nation. Intense state-building efforts in Iberia become more apparent in the archaeological record of the 2nd century BC.

Combined with archaeology and fragmentary literary sources, linguistic, anthropological, and genetic data have been used to address longstanding questions regarding population prehistory of Georgia and ethnogenesis of the Georgian people. An original homeland of the Kartvelian languages, natively spoken in Georgia, has been proposed somewhere in or near the modern-day country, but it has not been conclusively identified with any specific archaeological culture. The reconstructed Kartvelian proto-language is dated, based on glottochronology, to the 3rd millennium BC. Genetic studies support that there is genetic continuity in the South Caucasus stretching back at least 13,000 years to the late Upper Palaeolithic. The core genetic structure of the indigenous Caucasian groups had been formed before the establishment of ethnic and linguistic diversity in the region in the Bronze Age.

Lower Paleolithic
The earliest archaeological evidence of the Lower Paleolithic human habitation of the territory of Georgia has been uncovered under the medieval ruins of Dmanisi in the country's southern Kvemo Kartli region. Animal and human bones, including five human skulls discovered between 1999 and 2005, as well as stone chopping tools and flakes unearthed at Dmanisi have been dated to at 1.6–1.8 million years ago, yielding the earliest unequivocal evidence for presence of the genus Homo outside the African continent in the Pleistocene. The Dmanisi hominin fossils, such as the fully complete Dmanisi skull 5, closely resemble specimens from East Africa, such as H. habilis and H. erectus. Technological characteristics of the lithic assemblage from Dmanisi, composed of more than 8,000 artifacts such as choppers, chopping tools, flakes, and scrapers, chronologically correspond to the Oldowan African sites.

There is a significant time gap between the Dmanisi fossils and the oldest unquestionable archaeological proof of the second phase of Caucasian Lower Paleolithic that is represented by the Acheulean tradition of handaxes, its earliest evidence dated to about 500,000 years ago. This temporal gap is filled by the paleontological sites at Tsalka and Akhalkalaki — dated to around 1 million years ago by biostratigraphy — but without evidence of hominin occupations. The Acheulean habitat is best represented by cave sites with more or less clear stratigraphy such as those of Kudaro and Tsona on the southern slopes of the central Greater Caucasus.

Some Acheulean materials, such as bifacial billhook-type stone tools are typical to the South Caucasus, while other features, such as cleavers on flakes, resemble the respective industry of the Levant. This may point to external influences and local developments, leading to a hypothesis by Mgeladze and Moncel that the South Caucasian Acheulean technology was the result of arrival of new hominin groups from the Levant long after the Dmanisi population and their subsequent isolation south of the Greater Caucasus mountainous barrier. Nikoloz Tushabramishvili has also put forward the evidence of Clactonian industry of flake tools — a tradition distinct from Acheulean — at the stratified open-air sites at Ziari in Kakheti in eastern Georgia.

Middle Paleolithic
The South Caucasus, particularly western Georgia, was a major geographic corridor for human migrations during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. It is also an important location to study Neanderthal and modern human interactions during the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition.

The Middle Paleolithic in Georgia, spanning a long period during the Middle and Upper Pleistocene (150,000–35,000 BC), is characterized by nearly 200 rock-shelters, caves, and open-air sites both in the lowlands and highlands, mostly in the western half of the country. This diversity and the heterogeneous nature of stone tools from these sites reflect a cycle of abandonment and settlement in response to availability of local resources and the changes in natural environment. The most informative Middle Paleolithic sites such as the Jruchula cave, Ortvale Klde rock-shelter, and the Tsutskhvati cave complex are located within the Rioni-Qvirila river basin in the Imereti region of western Georgia. Modern technological studies have demonstrated affinities between the blade industry from Jruchula and that from several early Middle Paleolithic sites in the Levant and southern Anatolia.

This period saw the prominence of the Neanderthals, a hominin species who employed a new disc-core technique of stone toolmaking known as Levallois. The Neanderthal fossils, mostly teeth, are attested in Georgia at Ortvale Klde, Jruchula, Bondi, Sakazhia, and Tsutskhvati. The end of the Middle Paleolithic was marked by the demise of the last Neanderthals and global migration of anatomically modern humans. Archaeological evidence from the Caucasian sites, including clear technological and typological differences between the late Middle Paleolithic and the early Upper Paleolithic assemblages at Ortvale Klde, indicates that the end of Neanderthal occupation around 39,000-37,000 years ago as well as its replacement by anatomically modern human habitation sometime between 40,000 and 35,000 years ago was relatively rapid and the two species did not coexist and interact in the region. A revised chronology for Ortvale Klde — based on dating discrete layers of volcanic ash — pushes the dates for the end of the Middle Paleolithic and beginning of the Upper Paleolithic even earlier, respectively, to 47.5–44.2 ka cal BP and 46.7–43.6 ka cal BP.

Upper Paleolithic
The bearers of the Upper Paleolithic (35,000–10,000 BC) tradition arrived considerably later in the Caucasus than they did in Western Europe and the Near East. The swift expansion of anatomically modern Homo in the region, in the scarcity of human skeletal remains, is attested by the spread of innovative stone technology in the form of long blades, bladelets, and a series of micro-tools at the sites such as Dzudzuana, Ortvale Klde, Mghvimevi, Sakazhia and Gvarjilas Klde. The Upper Paleolithic tool industries exhibit similarities on both sides of the Greater Caucasus, suggesting that the mountains, hitherto a barrier for the late Neanderthals, had been breached by the expanding modern humans. The Dzudzuana cave also provides most detailed reports on Upper Palaeolithic faunal remains in the Caucasus: steppe bison, aurochs, and West Caucasian tur were the most frequently hunted species in the area. The site has also yielded what Eliso Kvavadze and colleagues describe as one of the earliest known dyed flax fibers, dated to 30 cal ka BP.

In the Upper Paleolithic, the fall of temperature in the South Caucasus was considerable, but the glaciation of southern slopes of the Greater Caucasus crest was less extensive. Humans sought refuge in the lowlands and foothills of western Georgia, where the local environment of the Rioni-Qvirila river basin was warm, humid, and well forested, aided by ameliorating effects of the Black Sea and the buffering function of the Caucasus mountains. In more easterly areas, the human presence was very sparse during this period and into Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene when sites with Mesolithic industries appear.

Four cave sites in western Georgia—Bondi, Dzudzuana, Satsurblia, and Sakazhia—have yielded human fossils from the Upper Paleolithic deposits. The results of paleogenetic studies of two individuals from Satsurblia (13,132–13,380 cal BP) and Kotias Klde (9,529–9,895 cal BP), both in western Georgia, indicate that the first modern humans to appear in the Caucasus shared ancestry with the Upper Paleolithic humans of Western Asia. They belonged to a distinct clade — Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer — which split from the European Upper Paleolithic population about 45,000 years ago, shortly after expansion of anatomically modern humans into Europe, and remained isolated from them during most of the Upper Paleolithic.

Mesolithic
The boundary between the end of the Upper Paleolithic and the early Mesolithic in the Caucasus is blurry. Microliths, a hallmark Mesolithic toolkit, have their origin in the stone industries of the preceding era. The sites attributed to the Mesolithic (c. 10,000–6500 BC) in Georgia are found across a range of altitudes and environments. Based on variability in the lithic industries, they are divided into several regional groups, such as those of the northeastern Black Sea (Iashtkhva, Kvachara, Apianchi, Entseri) and Imereti (Sagvarjile, Chakhati, Darkveti) in western Georgia and Trialeti (Gudaleti, Edzani, Zurtaketi) in eastern Georgia. Kotias Klde of the Imereti group (radiocarbon dated to 12,400-10,300 cal BP) is best studied in terms of chronology and Mesolithic transition. The related sites are caves and rock-shelters characterized by a suite of flint microliths and bone tools, and faunal remains indicative of forested environment. The Trialeti group consists mostly of open-air sites with access to nearby obsidian sources. They have yielded evidence of almost exclusive use of obsidian in stone industry and remains that indicate the existence of both forest and steppe environments. The appearance of obsidian pieces at the western Georgian sites, such as Anaseuli-1 and Kotias Klde — several hundred kilometers away from the nearest source of obsidian at Mount Chikiani — indicates long-distance travels or trade for acquisition of this material.

All these Mesolithic groups were hunter-gatherers with advanced hunting tools and strategy as suggested by abundance of large mammal species, including dangerous boar and bear, at the caves of Kotias Klde and Darkveti in Imereti. Cut marks suggest that bears were hunted and butchered also for their fur and for ritualistic reasons. Hunting scenes are depicted as rock art in the Trialeti petroglyphs in southern Georgia, engraved over a number of periods from the Mesolithic to the Middle Bronze Age.

Neolithic
Spread of Neolithic technology and innovations — connected to agriculture and settled life — is dated in the Caucasus some 3500 years after its earliest manifestations in south-eastern Anatolia in the 9th millennium BC. The regional transition from the Mesolithic is poorly documented because of a lack of sites reliably dated to the period immediately before the Neolithic, absence of built structures, and scarcity of systematically collected faunal and floral remains. Whether Neolithization of the Caucasus was connected to immigration of farmers from Anatolia or knowledge transmission is an open question. The impact of the environmental changes — namely, the 8.2-kiloyear event and subsequent forest expansion as suggested by evidence collected from southern Georgia — also remains to be characterized.

Early Neolithic in western Georgia?
Several sites in western Georgia — such as Anaseuli group in the southwestern lowlands (e.g., Anaseuli-1, Gurianta, Urta, Kobuleti, Odishi, Paluri) and the Paluri-Nagutni group in the western and north-central foothills (e.g., Paluri, Kotias Klde, Darkveti) — have been dated by their 20th-century excavators to the Mesolithic–Neolithic interface period and classified as Early or Pre-Pottery Neolithic. This attribution was made on the basis of stone tool technology; most of these sites had neither secure context nor radiocarbon dates. Later studies did not find conclusive evidence for permanent settlement and subsistence economy, suggesting continued reliance exclusively on hunting and gathering. Western Georgia — a region dominated by extensive wetlands during the mid-Holocene — appears to have provided relatively unfavorable environment for Neolithization.

Evidence, including single absolute date for the upper layer at Dzudzuana (5600 BP), suggests that the earliest Neolithic appeared in western Georgia long after sedentarism and agriculture developed elsewhere in the South Caucasus. Earliest items that reflect a Neolithic character — such as polished tools and grit-tempered ceramics — are found in the caves of Imereti (e.g., Kotias Klde, Samele Klde, Dzudzuana, Darkveti), some of which had previously been labelled as "Eneolithic".

Shulaveri–Shomu culture
The best documented Neolithic culture in the Caucasus illustrating the growth of permanent food-producing settlements is the Shulaveri–Shomu culture unearthed in parts of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and carbondated to c. 6000–5250 cal BC. It has yielded the earliest unequivocal evidence for the introduction of agriculture, house construction, pottery production, and metalworking in the region. Architecture and material culture exhibit links between the Late Neolithic Caucasus and and the Umm Dabaghiyah-Sotto and Hassuna cultures of northern Mesopotamia, but the nature of the interaction is unknown.

The Georgian sites associated with this culture are found in eastern Georgia, in its southern part, along the fertile middle reaches of the Kura, and exemplified by the eponymous Shulaveris Gora site as well as Imiris Gora, Arukhlo, Khramis Didi Gora, and Gadachrili Gora. These Neolithic communities established intensely settled clusters over prolonged periods, which have formed stratified mounds of 1 to 4.5 ha in area. These farming settlements emerged in previously uninhabited places and consisted of dense groups of round or oval mudbrick houses, measuring between 2.5 and 5 m in diameter and linked by low walls. Remains of human burials have been unearthed in Arukhlo and Imiris Gora. The former has also yielded only example of cremation in the Stone-Age South Caucasus. Very few Neolithic sites have been identified in the highlands, a notable example being the Bavra-Ablari rock-shelter site on the Javakheti Plateau in southern Georgia.

Material culture of the Shulaveri–Shomu sites is characterized by diverse obsidian-dominated lithic industry, near-absence of microliths, abundance of bone and horn artifacts, and introduction of coarse, handmade and mostly egg-shaped pottery, sometimes decorated with anthropomorphic motifs. Copper beads from the latest layers of Khramis Didi Gora and Arukhlo are some of the earliest known metal artifacts in the South Caucasus. A collection of more than 60 unbaked clay human figurines have also been found at Khramis Didi Gora. Domesticated animals such as cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs are present from the earliest phase of this horizon. The 2017 multidisciplinary study of ancient organic compounds absorbed into the pottery fabrics from two key sites in Georgia — Shulaveris Gora and Gadachrili Gora — provided "the earliest biomolecular archaeological evidence for grape wine and viticulture from the Near East".

Chalcolithic
The Chalcolithic in the South Caucasus lasted from from c. 5000/4800 to 3500 BC. In general, contrary to their Neolithic forerunners, the Chalcolithic villagers enjoyed more mobile lifestyle and the ability to benefit from resources across different environmental zones. They had more diversified subsistence patterns, external exchange networks, and more advanced metal industry based on copper production. The territory of Georgia is home to several sites that belong to different coexisting and overlapping archaeological traditions principally defined by the type of associated pottery — the Chaff-Faced ware and Sioni.

The Chaff-Faced assemblage is a ceramic repertoire characterized by distinctive chaff impressions on the surfaces of typically undecorated vessels — an element influenced by the Amuq F culture of northern Mesopotamia. This has been explained by various scholars as suggesting the "pre-Uruk" or "Uruk colonization" from Mesopotamia or trading networks, fueled by the quest for metal ores in the Caucasus. Metalworking was significant during this period in the South Caucasus and small metal articles such as ornaments, awls, knives and fishing hooks, mostly of arsenic copper, are found throughout the region. The Chaff-Faced ware tradition first appeared in the South Caucasus in the first half of the 5th millennium BC and became geographically widespread, with an important middle stretch in modern Azerbaijan as the Leyla-Tepe culture. A notable site of this tradition is Berikldeebi — in the Shida Kartli region of eastern Georgia — its Chalcolithic layers carbondated to 4000–3600 cal BC. It features organized mudbrick architecture, including rectangular dwellings, a monumental defensive fence, and a three-room building — a temple, according to the excavator Alexander Javakhishvili.

The Sioni tradition is defined by handmade grit-tempered pottery with ornamented rims and slipped surfaces from the eponymous type site in Georgia's southern Kvemo Kartli region, in the piedmont of the Lesser Caucasus, where the Chalcolithic occupation is carbondated to 4245/3975–4055/3905 cal BC. The Sioni ceramic tradition also occurs on several other sites in Kvemo Kartli, as well as the Alazani plain in Kakheti and the Aragvi valley in Shida Kartli, making southern and eastern Georgia its home region. The similar pottery has also been found — alongside other locally prevailing contemporary ceramic traditions — on several sites beyond the borders of Georgia, especially on both sides of the middle Araxes valley. Conversely, small quantities of chaff-tempered ceramics are found in association with grit-tempered pottery at Tsopi, close to Sioni. This fact — as well as a set of technological, morphological, and stylistic features shared by the Chaff-Faced and Sioni traditions — suggests intense interaction and cultural intermixing. Most eastern Georgian sites associated with the Sioni tradition are usually characterized by thin occupational layers, a lack of organized architectural features, and a prevalence of pits, postholes, and ashy deposits, suggesting the remains of lightweight, semi-subterranean architecture built from wattle-and-daub. The exception is the Sioni type site itself which features a semi-subterranean circular stone architecture and pits and rich obsidian-based lithic industry.

The presence of grit-tempered ceramics with the Sioni-type affinities in western Georgia is difficult to explain due the scarcity of evidence. Renewed surveys and excavations of several of these sites — mostly caves and rock shelters sometimes labelled as the Darkveti group — reclassified them as being Neolithic rather than Chalcolithic. Evidence of early metallurgy — cold-worked and annealed copper artifacts — is also attested in western Georgia, but no radiocarbon dates are available for these sites.

The Chalcolithic communities buried their dead in pit graves, ceramic jars, and burial mounds. A mound at Kavtiskhevi in Shida Kartli is one of the earliest funeral deposits of this kind in the South Caucasus. An infant jar burial was found below the floor of a large Early Bronze Age building at Chobareti in Georgia's southern Samtskhe-Javakheti region, a terrace site belonging to the Kura–Araxes culture with its earliest layer carbondated to 3300–3000 cal BC. This, together with scattered chaff-tempered shreds unearthed at the site, point to a lingering Late Chalcolithic tradition.

Bronze Age
The Bronze Age lasted for three thousand years, from the middle of the 4th millennium BC to the early 1st millennium BC and saw profound changes in the Caucasian societies. It is conventionally divided into the Early (c. 3500–2500 BC), Middle (c. 2500–1700 BC), and Late Bronze Ages, the latter being culturally continuous with the Early Iron Age (c. 1700–800 BC).

Early Bronze Age
Throughout the Early Bronze Age, much of the South Caucasus, with the exception of most of western Georgia, was dominated by the Kura–Araxes culture, so named by its researcher, Boris Kuftin, after the major river basins in the region. Emerging around 3500 BC, this culture gradually replaced the Chalcolithic lifestyle. The two cultures display a discontinuity in ceramics, settlement types, and domestic features, but a degree of hybridization linking these traditions is still visible. The Kura–Araxes-related archaeological material has been unearthed further south in Anatolia and beyond, in present-day northern Israel and northwestern Iran. What this geographical spread indicates — population movements and assimilation, transformation of local customs, or shifting of political or social relations with the neighboring cultures — is debated.

Georgia is home to a host of the Kura–Araxes sites, clustered along the Kura and its tributaries, both lowlands and highlands, such as Kvatskhelebi, Berikldeebi, the Sachkhere barrows, Khizanaant Gora, Amiranis Gora, Chobareti, Ilto, Samshvilde, Koda, Zhinvali, Grmakhevistavi, and Digomi. Despite regional diversity — which, in the view of the archaeologist Antonio Sagona, reflects multi-ethnicity — this vast culture had a number of diagnostic attributes. These are the hallmark red-and-black burnished pottery, often bearing regionally specific ornamentation and surface treatments; standardized use of domestic space fitted with typical elements such as hearths and benches; and a limited number of metal and stone items.

The Kura–Araxes peoples formed a settled, nonhierarchical, and agropastoral society, located in small villages, of which Kvatskhelebi in central Georgia provides the best evidence for a complete settlement plan. Deliberate terracing is evident at Amiranis Gora. Architecture was typically modest, varying from stone and wattle-and-daub in the highlands to mud-brick structures sometimes with stone foundations in the lowlands. A highland site at Rabati in southern Georgia stands out in this regard, displaying a large dry stone structure rarely seen in the Kura-Araxes settlements. Burial practices varied from earthen pits to barrows; both single and multiple inhumations were common. The Kura–Araxes culture exhibits little emphasis on militarism and defense and uncovered burials yield little evidence of internal social differentiation within the community, where the household functioned as an institution of primary importance. This is in contrast to the succeeding regional traditions or the earlier, but overlapping Uruk societies of Mesopotamia and the Maikop culture in the North Caucasus, based on the models of vertical social structure.

The Kura–Araxes peoples adopted a mixed-farming subsistence strategy; they cultivated cereals, and herded sheep and goats and, to a lesser extent, cattle. Forms of transhumance were possibly also practiced. Evidence of winemaking — based on pollen analyses — has been collected at Aradetis Orgora in central Georgia. Metal production during this period was widespread and household-based, drawn on the metallurgical skills developed in the Chalcolithic; copper-arsenic alloys were favored initially, but then tin was regularly used to produce a limited repertoire of bronze items — axes, awls, daggers, spearheads, and ornaments. Significant evidence for mining relates to gold. An extensive mine at Sakdrisi, in Kvemo Kartli — sacrificed to the modern mining industry despite protests from academics and preservationists in 2015 — is considered by a German-Georgian research team to be the world's oldest known gold mine, radiocarbondated to c. 3300–2600 BC.

Around 2500 BC, the dense distribution of the Kura–Araxes settlements went in significant decline and was followed by a markedly different, more sparsely distributed culture characterized by a sharp increase in mostly individual burial mounds known as kurgans. The first flush of this tradition, straddling the  Early  and  Middle  Bronze  Age, is sometimes collectively known as "early kurgan cultures". It saw major innovations and social changes, entailing the rise of hierarchically organized society.

Middle Bronze Age
Major South Caucasian "early kurgan" traditions, roughly dated to c. 2500–1900 BC, are those of Martqopi and closely related Early Trialeti and that of Bedeni, so named after respective localities in eastern Georgia and largely distinguished by details of pottery forms and decorations, which included high-quality lustrous black burnished vessels with finely incised ornamentation. An important bridging site is the Sachkhere mounds in Imereti, which overlaps chronologically with the latest phases of the Kura–Araxes culture. The kurgans differ in size and wealth of inventory, reflecting growing social differentiation. The societies associated with these kurgan cultures were not egalitarian and those at the top of the community wielded enough power to afford these large mortuary mounds. Some of these kurgans contained rich inventories, including tin bronzes together with arsenic ones, silver and gold jewelry, carnelian and frit beads, and large four-wheeled wooden wagons.

Parallel to these changes in material culture, the permanent settlements on the territory of eastern Georgia shrank in number, giving way to a more mobile society, and did not revive until the end of the Middle Bronze Age, though villagers continued to practice a diverse horticulture. Rare evidence of village life is afforded by the Bedeni-type settlements of Berikldeebi and Tsikhiagora, the latter lying above the Kura–Araxes layer.

Kurgan traditions of the central South Caucasus culminated in the Trialeti culture, dated to c. 1900–1700 BC. Like the earlier kurgan groups, it was characterized by evidence of strong social differentiation, large and rich mound burials with jewelry, hammered bronze belts, and inlaid gold bowls, and fugitive settlements indicating a mobile population. A rare glimpse into the lifestyle of the Trialeti-type settlements is provided by the Jinisi site in Trialeti and by Didi Gora and Tqisbolo Gora in Kakheti in eastern Georgia which suggest that the local economy was based on a combination of farming and animal husbandry (cattle and horse) supplemented by hunting. New practices included cremation burial, the creation of ritual roads to the mounds, the appearance of black geometric designed and black-on-red painted pottery, and new forms in metallic inventory. Large kurgans at Trialeti itself and other comparable sites of that period, such as the Vanadzor culture across the border in Armenia, display traits that link them to the Eurasian Steppe, while iconographic details of two embossed silver goblets, one found at Trialeti Kurgan 5 in Georgia and the other at Karashamb in Armenia, point to the Anatolian or Mesopotamian connections. According to Kristian Kristiansen, the Trialeti culture thus became a hub of exchange and trade between the steppe and the emergent Hittite city-states in Anatolia.

Two principal theories exist to explain the disjunction between the Kura–Araxes and kurgan traditions. One, advocated by Pavel Dolukhanov and Gregory Areshian, suggests ecological reasons for the breakdown of the Kura-Araxes village-based agrarian society. The other, more widely accepted, hypothesizes the arrival of new populations in the region. They may have come from the south, northern Mesopotamia, as argued by Giorgi Melikishvili, or from the north, across the Caucasus mountains, as posited by the scholars such as Charles A. Burney and Philip L. Kohl. According to Kohl, the incoming pastoralists, using oxen-driven wagons, could have gradually moved south from the western Eurasian Steppe into the South Caucasus and assimilated with the remaining Kura-Araxes peoples, adopting a more mixed economy.

Late Bronze Age
The Late Bronze Age, as described for the central portion of the South Caucasus—including present-day eastern Georgia, Armenia, and western Azerbaijan—is dated between c. 1700 BC and 1200 BC; there is no clearly identifiable sociocultural gap between it and the subsequent Early Iron Age. It saw a long period of mobility and pastoral economy succeed by a more settled mode of life and expanded agricultural economy as well as the emergence of complex societies in the region. This transition is also evident in new forms of mortuary architecture, pottery, and metal material repertoires.

Common features of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age traditions in the areas of central South Caucasus include black or gray wheel-made pottery, often burnished, with incised or impressed decoration, and an industry of complex bronzeworking, which increasingly favored tin-bronzes over arsenical copper and bronzes. During this period, Georgia, and the Caucasus in general, became one of the leading metalworking regions of the Old World.

Based on local variants, two Late Bronze–Early Iron Age horizons are described in eastern Georgia. The broadly defined culture of Lchashen–Tsitelgori, so named after two type sites, respectively, in eastern Armenia and easternmost Georgia, is known for typical battle-axes and daggers, and large pottery vessels decorated with incised waves and triangles. The Samtavro horizon, more narrowly focused in the Georgian region of Shida Kartli, is defined by characteristic bronze leaf-shaped blades and pottery with zoomorphic handles. The chronology, boundaries, and characteristics of these traditions are not always clear as they frequently overlap, disappear in certain areas or interact with each other.

The archaeological record of the period is marked by the reappearance of permanent settlements of various sizes, which are built of stone, often well-defended, and at times associated with large cemeteries such as Samtavro in Mtskheta and Treligorebi in Tbilisi. Settlements with semi-subterranean buildings, which have less massive or no fortifications, are found in the lower valleys and intermediate plateaus such as Udabno in a steppe in eastern Kakheti and Sajoge at Tbilisi, while the highland Tsalka and Javakheti plateaus in Georgia's south are dotted with cyclopean fortresses—monumental hilltop structures of dry masonry—such as Beshtasheni, Sabechdavi, Shaori, Abuli, and Avranlo. Fortresses were frequently constructed at the edges of arable plains, suggesting a concern with the control of agricultural land and resources. Contemporaneous sacred space is exemplified by Shilda, Meligele I, and Melaani in Kakheti, where rich assemblages of bronze material point to ritual hoarding.

During the Late Bronze Age, hallmark large kurgans and their wealth of the preceding Middle Bronze Age disappeared. They were succeeded by cemeteries, which usually consisted of individual burials—stone cists or pit graves—with relatively fewer deposited objects, mostly functional and ceremonial metal weapons, as well as some jewelry, including distinctive ornamented bronze belts, figurines, and ceramic vessels. Items of goldwork in the middle Kura zone, an early center of gold innovation, precipitously declined during this period. These cultural changes suggest that the elites now chose to express themselves not through the aggrandizement of individuals, but placing more emphasis on communities and institutions. The emergence of the new military elites is further evident by the presence of combat weapons in male children graves at Narekvavi in Shida Kartli, which emphasized their families' social class and, possibly, hereditary status.

The reconstruction of the Late Bronze Age Caucasian sociopolitical landscape is based on the visible remains due to the almost total absence of written sources. Archaeological record suggests the emergence of structured communities based on institutional authority as well as a degree of interaction and exchange networks, but there is no indication that local groups were held together by formalized relations of power. It is also unclear whether the authority was exercised by individual rulers or communal governance structures. The process of militarization as evidenced by an extensive building of fortifications and multiplication of weaponry is assumed by the scholars such as Manuel Castelluccia to have been the result of internal development rather than a massive external threat. Long-range contacts with the wider Near East are indicated by the recovery of precious and everyday objects of the Mesopotamian provenance, such as the Mitannian cylinder seals found in the Sapar-Kharaba burial ground in Trialeti. This archaeological evidence of interaction, however, in the view of Adam T. Smith, does not necessarily indicate political influence.

In the same period, the ancient Near Eastern written sources begin to mention some ethnic and political entities in eastern Anatolia, but no reliable information is given regarding the lands further north and east, that is, those belonging to the present-day countries of the South Caucasus. Attempts at locating many of the recorded entities archaeologically or their identification as ancestral to later, better attested peoples—whether based on phonetic similarities in names or purported geographic location—have been inconclusive and controversial. For example, the identity of Mushki, a group appearing in Assyrian texts around 1165 BC, is still a matter of dispute—whether they were proto-Kartvelian, proto-Armenian, or bearers of an otherwise unknown Indo-European idiom. Likewise, it is also unclear whether Kaska was the name of an ethnic group of the proto-Northwest Caucasian or proto-Kartvelian affinities, or, rather, a collective term applied by the Hittites to diverse groups in northern Anatolia.

Colchian culture
Due to the extensive wetlands and the transformation from open lagoons to an alluvial plain that took place between the 4th and the mid-2nd millennium BC, favorable condition for the permanent occupation of the western Georgian lowlands developed only shortly before the 2nd millennium BC. From the Early Bronze Age to the Early Iron, a discrete archaeological tradition flourished in this region, both lowlands and the adjacent foothills, and further south along the Black Sea coast up to modern Ordu in Turkey. Named after Colchis, an ancient Greek appellation of the eastern Black Sea littoral region, this culture is divided into two basic phases — Proto-Colchian (c. 2700–1600 BC) and Early or Ancient Colchian (c. 1600–700/600 BC), the terms emphasizing cultural continuity between these periods. They were followed by the final Colchian period of Classical antiquity, during which Greek colonies were established in western Georgia in the 6th century BC.

The Colchian culture is known from numerous burial grounds, settlements, metalworking workshops, and treasure troves. An important settlement that has the full Colchian sequence, extending from the 3rd millennium BC to the 4th-3rd centuries BC, is Pichori, not far from where the Inguri River flows into the Black Sea.

Architecture of the Colchian culture was wooden-based, often with wattle-and-daub walls. Due to high humidity and marshes, littoral dwellings were constructed on platforms made of thick wooden beams or on clay mounds. Others stood on natural hills or artificial mounds. Later, in the Early Iron Age, dune settlements on the sandy coastline and open-air unfortified settlements on river banks or terraces also appeared. Before houses were built, ditches were dug to roughly encircle the settlement. Substantial diversity exists in mortuary customs, varying from shaft graves in central Colchis to the megalithic dolmens in northern Abkhazia. Burials were individual (pits, stone cists, and jugs) as well as collective with complete or partial cremation.

One of the key features of the Early Colchian culture, which distinguishes it from its Proto-Colchian predecessor, is a rich and sophisticated bronze inventory, frequently deposited as hoards, including distinctive axes with incised geometric and zoomorphic decoration, hoes, sheet belts, animal pendants, and elaborate pins. The primary centers of metallurgy were the basin of the Chorokhi river, Abkhazia, and the mountains of Racha and Lechkhumi, with considerable local variation. Ceramic production evolved from mostly hand-made black polished and coarse pottery to decorated wheel-made pottery, with broad vertical flutes and zoomorphic handles. An important feature of the Colchian culture was a ritual of drinking, as testified by carefully made drinking vessels. The Colchian culture abutted and shared many items of metalwork with the Koban culture, which flourished in the north-central Caucasus (c. 1400–600 BC) and at the related site of Tlia at the south foothills of the central Greater Caucasus, attesting to an intensive system of contact. Overlapping features with eastern cultures in Shida Kartli, such as the pottery with zoomorphic handles, may reflect the Colchian cultural expansion into parts of eastern Georgia in the early Iron Age.

Iron Age
Chronological definitions of the Iron Age in Georgia are fluid. The Early Iron Age (c. 1200–800 BC) was marked by the emergence and gradual expansion of iron implements, but many of its archaeological forms and traditions were directly continuous with both the preceding Late Bronze Age counterparts and the succeeding phase of widespread use of iron (c. 800–600 BC). The latter is roughly contemporaneous with the Middle Iron Age in Anatolia and Iron 2 in Armenia, where, in contrast with Georgia, the presence of Urartian material culture is a defining feature of the period. It also straddles the conventional divide between prehistory and history in the South Caucasus. Due to the lack of stratified archaeological layers, similarly imprecise chronological terms such as Late Iron Age or Early Antiquity are employed for the subsequent period of the 6th-4th centuries BC.

Rise of iron
Archaeological evidence for the beginning of iron production in the South Caucasus has proven elusive. In eastern Georgia, initial adoption of iron seems to have been somewhat earlier than in the west and iron artifacts — mostly luxury items, such as ceremonial knives — are reported from the late 2nd millennium BC graves, but direct radiometric dates have been lacking. An analysis of metallurgical debris found in the 8th-6th century BC deposits on a fortified hilltop site at Mtsvane Gora in the Debeda valley in eastern Georgia suggests that iron innovation was integrated into ongoing copper-alloy metallurgy rather than being introduced by a socially or economically distinct group of iron smiths.

Numerous early metal production sites in the Colchian culture region, in southwestern Georgia — previously identified by the scholars such as David Khakhutaishvili as being iron-working and dated mostly to the late 2nd and early 1st-millennium BC — proved to be copper-melting sites, particularly active in the Supsa and Gubazeuli river areas between 1300 and 800 BC. Dwelling on existing metalworking skills, the Colchian metalsmiths began to produce large quantities of iron artifacts from the 8th-7th centuries BC and bronze metallurgy was gradually relegated to the production of jewelry.

Early Iron Age society
The South Caucasus was largely unaffected by great social and political upheavals, which marked the Late Bronze Age–Early Iron Age interlude in the Near East and eastern Mediterranean regions. Traditions dominating the territory of Georgia in the Late Bronze Age—Lchashen–Tsitelgori and Samtavro in the east and Colchian in the west—continued to flourish through the Early Iron Age, characterized by a number of settlements, burial grounds, advanced metallurgy, and intensified agriculture.

Archaeological record of the Early Iron Age suggests social hierarchy and the emergence of warrior elites in Georgia's eastern and southern areas, but not in the west of the country. In this period, there is no evidence of the presence of any major power able to control extensive areas in any part of the region. Indigenous traditions of sociopolitical order in Georgia were largely maintained and persisted even after Urartu emerged as the first imperial state in the South Caucasus and, then, as intensifying contacts with the outside world—driven by Greek colonization and Achaemenid expansion—brought new social and cultural elements into the region.

Urartu
Urartu, originally consolidating in the Lake Van area, was the first state to have brought the southernmost Caucasus and eastern Anatolia under a single imperial authority roughly between 800 BC and 600 BC. The northernmost Urartian cuneiform inscription at Ortakent near Hanak in northeastern Turkey indicates that the Urartian armies went as far north as the modern border between Turkey and Georgia. Geography of the Urartian inscriptions and toponymic reconstructions suggest that Urartu's northernmost recorded adversaries, the lands of Diauehi and Qulha—whom its kings fought and defeated on several occasions in the course of the 8th century BC—were located in a larger region north of modem Erzurum in northeastern Turkey, along the lower reaches of the Coruh and Kura valleys, which would become a culturally important borderland between medieval Georgia and Armenia. Qulha was possibly cognate but not necessarily coextensive with the Classical Colchis of the Greeks.

Within Georgia's modern borders, there is no conclusive archaeological evidence of any direct Urartian influence. There are no known Urartian-built fortresses—the distinctive hallmark of the Urartian regime—and local material cultures remained largely conservative in this period of the Iron Age, despite some subtle trends in pottery and metalworking. Some archaeological objects found in Georgia have been attributed to cultural or diplomatic interaction with Urartu, such as a piece of a bronze belt from a gravestone in Khirsa and a bronze shield facing from Melaani, both in Kakheti.

Nomads
At the end of the 7th century BC, Urartu fell to a combination of factors, including attacks by mounted nomadic peoples from the Eurasian Steppe—collectively known as the Cimmerians and Scythians—whose appearance is attested in the ancient Near Eastern and Greek sources. These groups left an equivocal trace in the archaeological record of Georgia. A long-held view that the South Caucasus suffered a massive destructive nomadic invasion has been questioned and revised by the scholars such as Gundula Mehnert based on reinterpretation of archaeological findings.

A number of the Early Iron Age sites in Georgia, especially a dense settlement system in the Iori–Alazani region in Kakheti and the Colchian coastal sites north of the Rioni river, exhibit a pattern of destruction and abandonment between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. The reasons behind these changes are not entirely clear; both ecological factors and violent conflicts have been proposed. Destruction deposits at some of these sites in eastern Georgia—such as at Melaani, Mochrili Gora, Tsiskaraant Gora, and Usakhelo Gora in Kakheti and Khovle Gora in Shida Kartli—contain socketed bronze arrowheads introduced by the Eurasian nomads. Also, Scythian-type objects such as battle weapons and elements of horse fittings have been retrieved from grave sites along the South Caucasian pass roads, for example, Kulanurkhva in Abkhazia and Dvani and Samtavro in Shida Kartli.

These "Scythoid" findings occur in relatively small, geographically limited areas at different times and in different contexts, coexist with local cultures, and largely cease in the 5th century BC. They do not necessarily testify to military encounters and do not always indicate the Scythian presence as the Scythian-type arrowheads were also adopted and used by the sedentary peoples of the region. Only a few sites such as the Shulaveri and Abanoskhevi burials—where the Scythian arrowheads occur in the absence of indigenous pottery—as well as a Scythian stele from Manavi attest to the temporary presence of the steppe nomads in the territory of eastern Georgia. Thus, there is no conclusive evidence that the steppe nomads were responsible for the destruction of Georgian settlements, but the eastern Georgian corridors—owing to their increasing desertification—could have been used by individual nomadic groups during their movements.

Colchis and Greek colonies
In the Early Iron Age, western Georgia continued to be dominated by forms of the Colchian culture, which stretched back to over 2,500 years and had developed widespread and advanced metal technology. By the middle of the 6th century BC, the arrival of Greek colonists to the eastern Black Sea coast introduced a unique element in the sociopolitical fabric of the region. The area was known to the ancient Greeks as Colchis, a distant land of mythological fame and a destination of the Argonaut expedition. It is in the Argonautic context that the name "Colchis" first appears in the ancient Greek literature, namely, a work attributed to the 8th-century BC poet Eumelus of Corinth.

Neither of the three colonies in Colchis attested in the ancient Greek literary tradition — Phasis, Gyenos, and Dioscurias — has been conclusively identified by archaeology because of changing riverbeds and coastlines and overgrowth by modern urban settlements at their presumptive location — Poti at the mouth of the Rioni and Ochamchire and Sukhumi in Abkhazia, respectively. The archaeological evidence, particularly, the 6th-5th-century BC imported Greek pottery, also points to a significant Greek presence elsewhere on the coast of Colchis, at Pichvnari, Tsikhisdziri, and Batumis Tsikhe in modern Adjara as well as at Eshera in Abkhazia. Penetration of the Hellenic culture in Colchis is further evidenced by the Greek practice of placing Charon's obol in the mouth of the dead attested at the burial ground of Pichvnari as well as various elements of grave-goods at far-inland sites such as Itkhvisi. The Greek cultural impact is also illustrated by the earliest known specimens of the local Colchian coinage, silver drachms, produced and widely used in the region from the middle of the 5th century BC to the 3rd century BC.

There is an ongoing dispute in modern scholarship as to whether the Greek colonies were self-sustained independent polities or small commercial settlements near local urban centers dependent on the trade between Colchis and Greece. Scholarly opinions also diverge on whether Colchis was a centralized and powerful kingdom or a politically fragmented region, settled by tribal communities who shared much of material culture. Archaeological evidence indicates both a degree of sociocultural homogeneity — exemplified by a widespread Colchian log-cabin and typical elongated Colchian axes and pottery with characteristic wavy lines and chevrons — and considerable regional variations within the Colchis material culture. Classical sources do not strictly define the borders of Colchis and deploy multiple names of local peoples, using "Colchian" as an umbrella term for a number of different groups.

Whatever the status of Colchis at that time, archaeological record of the region in the 6th-5th-centuries BC is that of stability and development. Profiting from its location, Colchis prospered, assimilating traditions and practices from Greece, Iran, and the Eurasian Steppe. The extensively excavated hinterland sites of Vani in lowland central Colchis and Sairkhe in the mountainous part of the region indicate the emergence of local aristocratic elites which dominated a stratified social hierarchy. Burials at these sites contained extensive and rich inventories, such as gold jewelry, silver and bronze personal ornaments, and local and imported pottery.

Literary sources
Around the time of the Scythian campaign of Darius I in 513/512 BC, parts of the South Caucasus was brought in close association with the expanding Achaemenid Empire. There is no unequivocal literary evidence that any part of Georgia was formally integrated into the Achaemenid enterprise. The 5th-century BC Greek historian Herodotus observes that the Persian rule reached as far north as the Caucasus Mountains. Unlike the adjoining peoples such as the Saspeires and the Pontic tribes of Moschi, Tibareni, Macrones, Mossynoeci, and Mares, Herodotus does not include the Colchians in his catalogue of the Achaemenid administrative provinces, but he reports that they were required to furnish a four-yearly tribute in the form of one hundred boys and as many girls. There is no explicit mention of eastern Georgia, or Iberia, as it was subsequently known to the Greco-Roman authors of Classical antiquity.

A rare glimpse in the southwestern fringes of Colchis is provided by Xenophon's Anabasis, an account of a retreat march of a force of Greek mercenaries through Achaemenid Anatolia to the Black Sea around 400 BC. It names several "autonomous" tribes populating fortified settlements in the highlands around the Greek maritime city of Trapezus, such as the Colchi, Tibareni, Chalybes, Drilae, Mossynoeci, Macrones, Phasiani, and Taochi. Archaeologically, little is known about them. It is difficult to determine whether these groups shared a material culture with Colchis proper and whether Xenophon's descriptions can be generalized to the population of lowland Colchis.

Archaeology
While the extent of Achaemenid political presence in Colchis and Iberia is debated, archaeological findings testify to a great impact the Achaemenid culture had on local architecture and craftsmanship. Features of monumental architecture with no local predecessors and influenced by Achaemenid tastes and styles appear at various places in Georgia in the 5th century BC. This is more pronounced in eastern Georgia, where material culture had hitherto developed in relative seclusion in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. Chronology of archaeological remains in eastern Georgia ascribed to the Achaemenid period is not always clear, but architectural details such as the ground plan of a tower at Samadlo, a bull-protome capital from Tsikhiagora, and capitals decorated in relief with lotus leaves from Dedoplis Mindori, Shiomghvime, and Sarkine, bear imprint of the Achaemenid cultural influence.

The most graphic evidence is the remains of massive buildings, built of regular mudbricks and furnished with bell-shaped column bases, discovered at Gumbati and nearby Saaklemo field, in Kakheti's Alazani plain, and dated to the 5th–4th centuries BC. These structures, as well as the similar complexes of Sari Tepe and Qaracamirli in Azerbaijan and Benjamin in Armenia, are closely related to palace models from the Achaemenid imperial centers, suggesting the existence of a kind of a network of administrative outposts. Further, petrological examinations suggest that the stone used at Gumbati and Qaracamirli come from the same quarry.

Vernacular architecture of eastern Georgia remained largely unaffected by these cultural trends and adhered to local traditions, stemming from the Late Bronze Age–Early Iron Age cultures. Residential buildings of the 8th–3rd centuries BC were modest private houses with pisé in Kakheti or rubble walls in Kartli, often limited to a single multi-functional room. There is much less evidence for Colchis, but here, too, architectural elements at Sairkhe and Vani, such as bull-head protomes, resemble Achaemenid models. In the rest of Colchis, a tradition of architecture in wood — archaeologically traceable from the Early Bronze Age on — prevailed and, in the 5th–4th centuries BC, occasionally produced buildings of considerable dimensions.

Another group of archaeological findings comprise hoards and grave inventories of local aristocracy, which include precious metal vessels and jewelry as well as glass phialai, stamp‐ and cylinder seals, and pottery. Some were produced in Achaemenid workshops and may have come to Georgia through trade or as diplomatic gifts; others were made in Colchis and Iberia by local craftsmen who imitated Iranian models or combined local and foreign elements. The sheer number of these Achaemenid and "achaemenizing" artifacts have been found as part of the burials of Khevi (Kazbegi Hoard), Qanchaeti, Tsintsqaro, Takhtisdziri, Sadzeguri (Akhalgori Hoard), and Grakliani Gora in eastern Georgia and Sairkhe, Mtisdziri, Vani, and Itkhvisi in western Georgia. Achaemenid cultural influence is also evident in southern Georgia, where the assemblages of the 6th to the 2nd centuries BC from a multi-layer settlement and necropolis in Atsquri contain numerous Achaemenid-type objects, such as jewelry. Atsquri has also yielded imported Greek pottery, which might have reached the area through a trade route from Colchis.

The Achaemenid impact is also visible in various other aspects of the material culture of ancient Georgia. Fragments of a wheel from Uplistsikhe in eastern Georgia match the evidence for an Achaemenid type of chariot. Since the 6th or early 5th century BC reddish hard-fired pottery — comparable to the Triangle Ware of northwest Iran — replaced traditional greyish, low-fired earthenware in eastern Georgia. A bilingual Greco-Aramaic monogram on a 5th-century BC kylix from Sairkhe suggests that the Colchian elites might have been familiar with Aramaic, the language of administration in the Achaemenid state.

After the Achaemenids
The arrival of Alexander the Great's forces in Western Asia and the attendant collapse of Achaemenid power in 330 BC ushered in a new era in the history of the region. This momentous event is often only vaguely reflected in the archaeological record of Georgia. There is limited evidence of a violent transition and the Achaemenid-influenced forms of material culture appears to have lingered on in parts of Georgia, especially in the east, even after the demise of the empire, eventually blending with local traditions and Hellenistic innovations. This puts Georgia in contrast to most parts of the former empire, including Iran proper, where the Achaemenid legacy in arts and architecture became largely imperceptible after Alexander's conquests.

Western Georgia
From around 350 BC to about 250 BC, there were contrasting changes in material culture of Colchis. While the coastal sites, exemplified by Pichvnari, continue to exhibit stable prosperity and cultural symbiosis of Greek and Colchian communities in this period, a relative decline becomes apparent in the hinterland; rich burials disappear as do prosperous local settlements such as Chaladidi, Ergeta, and Namarnu. Both Sairkhe and Vani, the principal inland sites and seats of Colchian elites, experienced destruction and resettlement — Sairkhe c. 250 BC and Vani c. 350 BC and again c. 150 BC. There was substantial new building in stone and a growing insecurity—probably connected to a general regional upheaval in Hellenistic Anatolia or encroachments from eastern Georgia—is indicated by extensive new fortifications around principal settlement sites such as Vani.

In addition, the traditional Colchian pottery was replaced by new forms, especially pear-shaped and red-painted ware familiar in eastern Georgia. Also, burial in storage-jars became commonplace in the Colchian hinterland around the same time as in eastern Georgia, but not on the coast of the Black Sea. Further, Greek influence became more pronounced as illustrated by the appearance of Sinopian roof tiles and their local imitations as well as Greek inscriptions from Vani and Eshera, dated to the 4th century BC.

Eastern Georgia
The Achaemenid-influenced forms of material culture lingered on in parts of eastern Georgia even after the demise of the empire, eventually blending with local and Hellenistic traditions. This puts Georgia in contrast to most parts of the former empire, including Persia, where the Achaemenid legacy in arts and architecture became largely imperceptible after Alexander's conquests. The archaeological evidence at local power centers in Georgia, such as Sairkhe, Tsikhiagora, and Samadlo, shows a continuity in monumental architecture, toreutics, and ceramics. Only Gumbati seems to have been abandoned in the late 4th century BC.

From the late 4th century BC on, a highly homogeneous material culture gradually developed throughout eastern Georgia. This culture had some connections with the Achaemenid-era prototypes, but local elements were prevailing and Hellenistic influence grew stronger. Burial grounds were dominated by stone cists. At the same time, pithos-burials also appeared. There is evidence of widespread and active building activity in eastern Georgia, more consistently from the early to mid-2nd century BC on. New flourishing centers emerged in addition to the still extant older complexes in what Otar Lordkipanidze has described as an "urbanistic explosion". Some of the important sites illustrative of the process have been explored at Uplistsikhe, Urbnisi, Kavtiskhevi, Samadlo-Nastagisi, Tsikhiagora, and Dedoplis Gora-Dedoplis Mindori. They no longer remained isolated from their surroundings; many bridges and fortifications were constructed, a testimony to conscious efforts at state-building.

These developments reflect the process of consolidation of the eastern Georgian communities and their eventual coalescence into a new kingdom, natively known as Kartli and referred to as Iberia by the Greeks. The emergence of native kingship in Iberia is presented by the medieval Georgian historical tradition—probably inspired by Pseudo-Callisthenes—as a direct consequence of Alexander's conquests, although the Caucasus was never actually breached by the Macedonian army. In the light of totality of literary and archaeological evidence, the possibility of the creation of Iberian monarchy in the early 3rd century BC is accepted in modern mainstream scholarship. Opponents, such as Burkhard Meißner, relegate the formation of the kingdom to the early to mid-2nd century BC.

Ethnic prehistory of Georgia
Theories that attempt to reconstruct the population prehistory of Georgia and ethnogenesis of the Georgian people are based on evidence supplied by archaeology, linguistics, modern anthropology and genetics, and the ancient Near Eastern and Classical literary sources. However, many of the ethnic names known from ancient records cannot be precisely located geographically. Nor can they be reliably associated with a specific archaeological culture.

Proto-Kartvelian language
The linguistic data are based on the reconstruction of Proto-Kartvelian, a common ancestral language of Georgian, Mingrelian, Laz, and Svan, and evidence of early contacts these languages had with the neighboring linguistic families such as Northwest and Northeast Caucasian and Indo-European. The question of the character, degree, and the very presence of kinship between the Kartvelian languages and the two North Caucasian groups is disputed. Also, many lexical and assumed phonological similarities between the Indo­-European and Kartvelian languages have been variously explained by early contacts — direct or indirect — and borrowings or, alternatively, collateral kinship.

Chronology for Proto-Kartvelian cannot be ascertained by direct historical evidence and remains based on the lexicostatistical evaluation, on the data derived from glottochronology. It suggests the existence of the Proto-Kartvelian language in the 3rd millennium BC or earlier. Precisely which region or archaeological culture was directly connected with a Proto-Kartvelian homeland remains unclear. Most scholars place it within or in the vicinity of the current distribution of the Kartvelian languages, such as the central and western portion of the Lesser Caucasus (Giorgi Melikishvili, Grigol Giorgadze, Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov, David W. Anthony), the Kura–Araxes culture zone in central South Caucasus (Otar Japaridze), or further southwest, central Anatolia (Igor Diakonoff, Giorgi L. Kavtaradze).

According to the glottochronological hypothesis first developed by Georgy Klimov and modified by Yakov G. Testelets, dissolution of the Proto-Kartvelian linguistic unity might have begun at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC with the divergence of Svan and was largely complete by the 8th century BC with the separation of Laz-Mingrelian and Georgian. As a result of territorial expansion, migration, and displacement and assimilation of various other groups—such as those speaking languages related to present-day North Caucasian—the breakaway Kartvelian-speaking groups eventually found themselves in their current location in the South Caucasus: Svan in northwestern highlands, Mingrelian and Laz along the Black Sea coastline and adjacent foothills in the west and southwest, and Georgian in the central and western South Caucasus. A wedge created between the closely related Mingrelian and Laz by a Georgian-speaking territory was the result of migration from eastern Georgia already in historical times, in the early Middle Ages.

Ancient DNA
Ancient DNA (aDNA) studies have revealed two different ancient human lineages from Georgia. An older, pre-Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) lineage is represented by genome-wide data from two individuals dated to around 26 ka BP from Dzudzuana cave in western Georgia, with substantial Basal Eurasian ancestry. It likely contributed at least half of the ancestry of later populations in Europe, the Near East, and North Africa. A human environmental genome from a single 25,000-year-old Upper Paleolithic sediment sample from Satsurblia cave, also in western Georgia, clusters with the Dzudzuana data.

A second group, different from the pre-LGM genomes and termed as Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer, has first been sampled at the late Upper Paleolithic Satsurblia (13.3 kya) and Mesolithic Kotias Klde (9.7 kya) cave sites in western Georgia. They were genetically intermediate between Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) and Neolithic Iran individuals. Satsurblia and Kotias were assigned to mitochondrial haplogroups K3 (found at about 11% frequency in modern Georgia) and H13c (found at highest frequencies in present-day Georgia and Dagestan), respectively, and both belonged to Y-chromosome haplogroup J2a (found at highest frequency in Georgia and Iraq).

The CHG population significantly contributed, together with EHG and to a lesser degree Anatolian Farmers, to the early Bronze-Age Yamnaya steppe herders, who migrated to Europe around 3,000 BC, as well as the modern populations from the Caucasus to South Asia. After c. 5000 BC, unadmixed CHG disappeared in the Caucasus and northwestern Iran. Anatolian Farmer ancestry, evolved in western Anatolia during the Neolithic, spread east through eastern Anatolia and the South Caucasus—as evidenced at Areni-1, Armenia—into Iran while CHG ancestry spread westward into Anatolia and the Levant. The millennia of population movement and admixture between the ancestral groups that continued into the Early Bronze Age resulted in a pattern of genetic homogenization across Anatolia and the South Caucasus. Following this, there appears no intrusion of genetically distinct populations in these regions. The Caucasian populations of the Bronze Age, irrespective of whether they were archaeologically associated with the Kura-Araxes or Maikop cultures, are modeled by Skourtanioti and colleagues as mixtures of the Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer/Iranian Neolithic and the Anatolian Farmer ancestry.

Modern population genetics
Individuals from present-day groups of various geographic, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds in the Caucasus have been analyzed at autosomal, Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial level in several studies, showing substantial genetic variability. Autosomal and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data appear relatively homogeneous across diverse ethnic and linguistic groups — the result of prehistoric population expansions that occurred around 29,000–47,000 years ago. At the same time, the Y-chromosome diversity reveals a deeper genetic structure attesting to several male founder effects, which corresponds to several proposed or known historical events.

Based on genome-wide studies, Gavashelishvili and colleagues observed that genetic differentiation between various Caucasian populations, including Georgian subethnic and territorial groups, correlates with landscape permeability to human movements, rather than ethnic or linguistic boundaries. It further reflects various dispersal pathways from few glacial refugia, such as the western South Caucasus, Anatolia, the Balkans and Siberia, in the Last Glacial Period and the early Holocene. Regarding linguistic diversity, a study of different Caucasian groups by Yunusbayev and colleagues suggested that the core autosomal genetic structure of the region's populations might have been formed before its many languages, including those considered autochthonous, appeared. Populations of the Caucasus were shown to be genetically most closely related to those of the Near East. This pattern of genetic variability gave rise to a language replacement hypothesis which suggests that many languages currently spoken in the Caucasus are of relatively recent date and imposed by relatively small incoming groups with higher technology or ability to dominate the indigenous population.

Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups G2, J2, and R1b together make up 75% of the modern ethnic Georgian population. Their distribution has a clear environmental pattern but transcend linguistic boundaries. These patrilineages come from different human refugia in the post-Last Glacial Maximum times; for example, G2 is thought to have originated in eastern Anatolia or the western Caucasus, while the northern part of the Fertile Crescent could have been the ancestral area for J2. Studies have found a high level of genetic diversity in Georgian maternal lineages, with mtDNA haplogroups H and T occurring at the highest frequency. These lineages belong to the overall Near Eastern gene pool, with coalescence ages extending back into the Upper Paleolithic, thus suggesting they might have been present in the Caucasus at that time.