Results and Future Perspectives

    The first season of the "Georgian-Italian Lagodekhi Archaeological Project" confirmed the interest of the Lagodekhi region for a long-term project of archaeological investigation. Test excavations at the site of Tsiteli Gorebi 5 showed the possible presence, for the first time in the region, of large architectural structures of the Chalcolithic period, which we intend to investigate, during the next years, by extensive horizontal exposure. At the same time, they provided a possible explanation for the poor preservation of the contemporary archaeological levels highlighted by all previous excavators, and clarified the general geomorphological history of the surrounding plain. Unfortunately, due to the bad weather conditions it was not possible to reach the base of the walls discovered in Soundings 2 and 3, and to ascertain whether a floor level was associated with them, and whether they were built directly on the natural soil or over earlier occupational layers. This will remain a task for the future seasons. Soundings 1-3 also yielded a an interesting assemblage of ceramics, lithics and worked bone material, which integrates the until now scanty corpus of published artefacts of the Chalcolithic period of Eastern Georgia.
    On the other hand, the dearth of reliable primary contexts of recovery and of organic material to be subjected to 14C analyses, and the homogeneity of the ceramic assemblage leave some important chronological question unanswered, e.g. that of the length and absolute dates of the period and of the existence of recognisable sub-phases within it. The lack of any recognisable influence of the "Chaff-faced Ware" horizon in the Tsiteli Gorebi 5 ceramic assemblage suggests a date earlier than expected, but further evidence is needed before any firm conclusion can be drawn on the topic. To solve these questions will be one of the aims of the next excavation seasons. Another task for the future seasons will be to investigate other contemporary sites in the surroundings of Tsiteli Gorebi 5, in order to get an idea of their mutual relations.
    The archaeological survey of the Lagodekhi municipality resulted in recording the locations of 70 archaeological sites of different periods, some of which were discovered thanks to remote sensing techniques and documented for the first time, although a large part of them were already known and/or excavated. Of special interest is the concentration of large kurgans, most of which presumably belonging to the later 3rd millennium BC Early Kurgan cultures, at the northern border of the forest flanking the Alazani river in the Chabukhiani/Ananauri area. About 20 of them have been mapped up till now, and their general distribution undoubtedly worth further analysis.
    Significant difficulties to the reconstruction of the ancient anthropic landscape were posed by low visibility caused by the heavy summer vegetation cover and by the severe alteration of the rural landscape which characterised the 20th century A.D. From a methodological point of view, an important achievement of the survey can be considered the development of a fine-tuned strategy for carrying out future surveys in such difficult and challenging conditions. We plan to carry out future survey seasons in October/November or April, when visibility conditions are supposed to be optimal.
    Other factors which apparently had a deep impact on the visibility of archaeological sites are the complex sedimentary history of the Alazani plain, which geo-morphological research is just starting to unravel, and agricultural intensification throughout the Soviet period. A precise strategy for quantifying the bias caused by these elements and include them into the evaluation of ancient settlement patterns will have to be developed during the following seasons.
    To sum up, besides setting the foundation for future larger scale excavations at the Chalcolithic site of Tsiteli Gorebi 5, the expedition collected a large number of data, whose future analysis in a multidisciplinary perspective will set the conditions for a better understanding of the natural environment of the Lagodekhi region, which appears to have been rather dynamic and clearly underwent significant changes in the course of the last millennia, and of its long-term impact on human settlement and economy.