Abstract:

The Kura-Araxes culture, one of the significant cultural phenomena of the Eastern Anatolian prehistory, originated in the second half of the 4th millennium BC with a sphere of influence that was pervasive in Transcaucasia and Northeast Anatolia including Çiğdemtepe until the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Çiğdemtepe Mound is situated within the borders of the province of Bayburt in Northeastern Anatolia among the Kura-Araxes culture, an area of research with few publications. Although the existence of Kura-Araxes culture in the Bayburt region was determined during surveys conducted in the 1940s, only the settlement records of the Büyüktepe Mound excavations carried out by Sagona in the 1990s are available. However, the excavations in this regard are not sufficient to illuminate the economic and cultural characteristics of the culture. Therefore, determining the material culture of Kura-Araxes through their dominant local features at Çiğdemtepe Mound is of great importance.The most significant artifact obtained from the Çiğdemtepe Mound excavations is the black-topped ceramic assemblage, the first of its kind to be documented in Northeast Anatolia. This type of ceramic group is known from Central Anatolia to be contemporary with the Kura-Araxes culture, and discovering this alongside the other finds at the mound is striking. Kura-Araxes ceramics are handcrafted and burnished with red inner and black outer surfaces, which has been attested across Transcaucasia. The black-topped ceramics from Central Anatolia have a black interior and a red-to-brown outer surface. Apart from the combination of these two cultural variations, which have exhibited dominant local characteristics extending to the East and West, the magnificent monumental architecture, other portable small finds, and stratigraphic details also stand out, revealing the transition of the area from the Late Chalcolithic Age to the Early Bronze Age and unveiling the cultural interactions, transformations, and developments that had occurred in the Early Bronze Age. Related archeological records consist of movable and immovable cultural assets, age analyses of charred wood samples, and literature reviews.

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