Archaeological Landscape and Settlement II

Dear Colleagues,

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) which provide insights about the exploitation of the world's highland zones.

During the last few decades, problems regarding the exploitation of the highland zones have been analysed in better detail by many archaeologists worldwide. People have started to interpret mountain chains not exclusively as natural barriers, but also like territories which were systematically exploited and crossed during prehistory and history, not only when the ice melted and passes became accessible to move throughout different landscapes, but also for settling in different periods of the year, for different reasons.

It is well known that mountaineers in general show many affinities and habits independent from the country where they live, the language they speak and the dress they wear. Ongoing archaeological research has shown how important highland zones are for the study of human behaviour, human impact on the landscape and the exploitation of new territories and resources, among which are different varieties of functional and precious stone, as well as metal ores. When did people start to move across mountains and why? Why they were attracted by highland zones, and why do some mountains hide indelible iconographic traces of people’s beliefs, settling and living? How can we interpret traces of transhumance and pastoralism, the somewhat ephemeral traces of the way shepherds built their seasonal camps made of tents or stone-walled and wooden dwellings? Some mountain chains around the world show traces of the passage of Palaeolithic groups and the first modern humans during their spread across Africa, Eurasia, and the New Continent. What do we know at present about all of these events, how do we study them and how can we improve the level of our research in the highland zones in the world?

Prof. Dr. Paolo Biagi
Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Starnini
Guest Editors

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• human impact on the landscape
• coastal changes and sea-level rise
• settlement pattern and site complementarity
• radiocarbon dating
• the exploitation of the highland zones

• Archaeological Landscape and Settlement in Land (15 articles)

Title: Monuments and villages around Lake Paravani in the highlands of the Lesser Caucasus of Georgia
Authors: Paolo Biagi and Marco Ferrandi
Affiliation: Ca' Foscari University of Venice Department of Asian and North African Studies (DSAAM) Ca' Cappello, San Polo 2035 I-30125 Venezia, Italy
Abstract: Surveys carried out in 2023 and 2024 along the mountains surrounding Lake Paravani (2073 m a.s.l.), which opens in the Javakheti Plateau of the Lesser Caucasus of Georgia, have led to the discovery of several groups of stone-walled monuments and villages, many of which are represented by different types of kurgans. The scope of this paper is to present these discoveries, define the typological characteristics of the kurgans and their location, discuss the presence of knapped obsidian artefacts and ceramic potsherds recovered from the surface of some of the aforementioned stone structures, and point out the importance of these latter finds in relation to the important Mt. Chikiani obsidian sources located a few kilometres from the Paravani sites. The presence of large villages composed of many squared and rectangular stone-walled features well above 2000m a.s.l. is intriguing. Although no radiocarbon date is currently available from these settlements, due to the absence of organic material suitable for dating, some of them have yielded obsidian artefacts or potsherds which suggest their probable Bronze and Iron Age relative chronology. The newly discovered high-altitude Paravani sites contribute to the interpretation of the peopling of this region of the Lesser Caucasus, a highland zone characterised by unique mountain landscapes with extreme winter temperatures that make their settling impossible during the winter months.