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Documentary work in Museums of the Kakheti province

    During the days of forced absence from the field because of the bad weather conditions, the members of the expedition paid several visits to different museums of the Kakheti region. The main aim was to identify the present location of the materials from Varazashvili’s 1970-80s excavations on the Tsiteli Gorebi microregion (Kviriatskhali, Damtsvari Gora) in order to re-study them and compare them with the new finds from Tsiteli Gorebi 5, and verify the presence of other interesting lots of materials of the Chalcolithic and Bonze Age. We first visited the Museum in Sighnaghi, where we located some exhibited finds from Varazashvili’s excavations, which we then photographed, drew, and thoroughly analysed. We had also the opportunity to consult the Museum catalogues, where we identified the inventory numbers of the remaining finds by Varazashvili and made a preliminary list of interesting artefacts from other excavations. For Varazashvili’s finds, we were directed to Gurjaani museum. Here, we first found some other artefacts from the Tsiteli Gorebi microregion, all of which we examined, without finding Varazashvili’s material. By looking at the local inventories, however, we identified some other interesting Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age material from the region, of which we made a preliminary list, which may be useful for future studies. At last, we managed to identify the location of the artefacts we were looking for in the reserve collections of Gurjaani museum. These were unfortunately temporarily unavailable as they had been packed with other material in order to be moved to a new location. A new inventory, however, is presently being made of all the wooden boxes, so that we are confident that the old Tsiteli Gorebi material will be available for study during our next season. We also paid a one-day visit to the Local Museum in Dedoplitskaro, where we consulted the inventory books and made a preliminary list of interesting materials.