Archaeometallurgical Investigations in Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan: What Does the Evidence from Late Chalcolithic Ovçular Tepesi Tell Us about the Beginning of Extractive Metallurgy?

ABSTRACT

The Late Chalcolithic (4400–3950 b.c.) occupation levels from Ovçular Tepesi have yielded a significant assemblage of copper objects and remains of copper production. Together with ore finds, two fragments of nozzle, crucible remains, and a number of small metal artifacts, this assemblage includes the unexpected discovery of three copper axes in an infant burial jar. These axes are the earliest examples of large copper tools known to date in southwestern Asia, whether it is in the Caucasus, Iran, or the Anatolian highlands. More importantly, the fact that these objects were locally produced suggests that significant metallurgical activities were being carried out at Ovçular as early as the second half of the 5th millennium b.c. After presenting the evidence from Ovçular Tepesi, this paper will proceed to a reassessment of the available archaeological and geochemical data concerning the emergence of extractive metallurgy in the southern Caucasus.

KEYWORDS:

• metallurgy
• axe
• Nakhchivan
• copper ore
• Chalcolithic

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the Nakhchivan Branch of the Azerbaijani National Academy of Sciences for their help, in particular Prof. Dr. Ismayil Haciyev for his kind and continuous support; the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum (Germany), where the chemical analyses have been carried out; Prof. Dr. Sabine Klein from the Institut für Geowissenschaften, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt-am-Main (Germany) for the lead isotope analyses; and Prof. Dr. Michael Prange and the staff of the Fachbereich Materialkunde for their help in processing the samples.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Nicolas Gailhard (Ph.D. 2007, Université de Paris I -Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris) is a member of the “Mines” project directed by Catherine Marro (CNRS) and Thomas Stöllner (University of Bochum). He has worked in Europe, Syria, Turkey, and the Caucasus for more than 15 years. His main area of research is archaeometallurgy and experimental archaeology in the Mediterranean and the Near East from the Chalcolithic to the Bronze Age. In 2010, he conducted a research programme on Iron metallurgy in Turkey at the Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations.

Michael Bode (Dr. rer. nat. 2008, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany) is a scientific researcher at the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum, in the Materials Science research department. His research focus is the study of production and provenance of metals from the past, and he also conducts mass spectrometry in the museum.

Veli Bakhshaliyev (Ph.D., Leningrad State University) is head of the Department of Archaeology at the Naxçıvan branch of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences. His main research interests include the development of metallurgy, the semiotics of rock art, and relations between the south Caucasus and neighboring areas.

Andreas Hauptmann (Ph.D., Ruhr-Universität Bochum) is a trained mineralogist and is the former head of the Research Group for Archaeometallurgy at the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum, Bochum and a professor of archaeometry at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. His research has focused on early mining and metallurgy, and the analysis of copper, bronze, iron, gold, and pottery. He has led and been involved in major expeditions to Jordan, Oman, and Georgia and has participated in many excavations in Germany, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Greece, Syria, and Cyprus.

Catherine Marro (Ph.D. 1995, Université de Paris 1- Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris) is an archaeologist. She has been working as a permanent researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) since 2000. Her research interests include the exploitation of natural resources by late prehistoric societies, linked with the emergence of urban societies and social inequalities.

Additional information

Funding

Work on Nakchivan’s early metallurgy has been carried out thanks to a grant from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (Programme “Mines”, 12- FRAL-0002-01), while the excavations at Ovçular Tepesi have been financially supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministère des Affaires Étrangères).