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Trialeti-Vanadzor culture

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Not to be confused with Trialetian Mesolithic.
A bejeweled gold cup from Trialeti. National Museum of Georgia, Tbilisi.
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The Trialeti-Vanadzor culture, also known simply as the Trialeti culture and previously referred to as the Trialeti-Kirovakan culture, is named after the Trialeti region in present-day Georgia and the city of Vanadzor in Armenia. This Bronze Age culture flourished between the late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BCE, marking a significant phase of sociocultural and technological development in the South Caucasus.[1] It arose in the territories previously inhabited by the Kura–Araxes culture, representing a notable cultural and material transition that includes advancements in metallurgy, burial practices, and social stratification.[2]

Several researchers hypothesized on the Indo-European affiliations of the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture,[3][4][5] with some proposing it may represent an early Proto-Armenian cultural horizon.[6][7] This hypothesis aligns with broader theories linking the culture to Indo-European migrations and the gradual emergence of Armenian ethnicity and language.

The Trialeti-Vanadzor culture eventually evolved into the Lchashen–Metsamor culture,[8] marking a continued trajectory of development in the Armenian Highlands. It has also been suggested as a cultural precursor to the Hayasa-Azzi confederation mentioned in Hittite records,[9][10] and has been linked to the Mushki—a people referenced in Assyrian sources.[11]

Background

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The Shulaveri–Shomu culture flourished in the region from approximately 6000 to 4000 BCE.[12] This was later succeeded by the Kura–Araxes culture.

The Trialeti-Vanadzor cultural horizon emerged and reached its peak toward the end of the third millennium BCE.[13]

During the final stage of the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1700–1500 BCE), the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture formed part of a broader, interconnected cultural sphere that spanned the South Caucasus and Armenian Highlands. Other major material culture horizons from this period—likely interacting with or overlapping Trialeti-Vanadzor—included Karmir Berd (also known as Tazakend), Karmir Vank (also referred to as Kizil Vank or Van–Urmia), and Sevan-Uzerlik (also called Sevan–Artsakh)[14]

Black-burnished and monochrome painted pottery unearthed at the cemeteries of Ani and Parget Nerkin (Armenian: Պարգետ Ներքին) in Kars Province, Turkey, along with artifacts from Sos Höyük IV in Erzurum Province, show stylistic similarities to Trialeti ceramics.[15] It has been suggested that Sos Höyük IV may have had links to the Hayasa-Azzi confederation.[10]

Kurgans

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By the Middle Bronze Age, evidence of significant social stratification is visible in the richly furnished mound burials associated with the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture. These elaborate tombs bear notable similarities to the Early Kurgan cultures of the Eurasian steppes. The presence of cremation practices, the introduction of painted ceramics, and the dominance of tin-bronze metallurgy reflect cultural transformations and technological advancement during this period.

The culture also exhibits broad regional connectivity. A remarkable example is a bronze cauldron from Trialeti that closely resembles one discovered in Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae, Greece, suggesting possible contact or shared symbolic traditions.[13] The Trialeti-Vanadzor culture demonstrates significant links to the civilizations of the ancient world, particularly the Aegean,[16] as well as to regions further south and east.[17]

The Karashamb Goblet, discovered in Karashamb, Armenia, dates to around 2100 BCE and is attributed to the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture. The designs on this silver vessel are believed to reflect motifs linked to Indo-European traditions. It is exhibited at the History Museum of Armenia.[18][19]

The pottery of the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture (both monochrome and polychrome) shows strong stylistic parallels with ceramic traditions across the Armenian Highlands and the Near East. One striking parallel is with the so-called Urmia ware, associated with the region around Lake Urmia in present-day Iran. Similar ceramic forms are also found in the Sevan-Uzerlik culture and the Karmir Berd-Sevan culture, underscoring the shared aesthetic and technological traits among these interconnected traditions.

Excavations at the Trialeti site began between 1936 and 1940 in connection with a hydroelectric development project. During this period, archaeologists uncovered 46 burial mounds. An additional six kurgans were excavated in a second phase between 1959 and 1962.[20]

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The Martkopi kurgans, roughly contemporary with the earliest Trialeti burials, share architectural and cultural features. These burial sites, located in eastern Georgia, are considered part of the Martkopi–Bedeni cultural horizon, a phase marking the transition into the Middle Bronze Age and viewed as an early expression of the Central Transcaucasian Kurgan tradition.[21]

Burial practices

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The Trialeti–Vanadzor culture is distinguished by its complex burial customs, particularly the entombment of elite individuals in large, richly furnished kurgans under earth and stone mounds. Some of these tombs contained four-wheeled carts, suggesting the high social status of the deceased. Numerous grave goods, including finely crafted gold objects, were uncovered, many of which bear stylistic and technological similarities to those from ancient Iran and Iraq.[16][12]

The Trialeti culture also demonstrated advanced metalworking, including the use of tin and arsenic alloys.[22] The use of tumulus burials and wheeled vehicles mirrors practices associated with the Kurgan hypothesis and the proposed early Proto-Indo-European speakers. Notably, the black-burnished ceramics found in the earlier Trialeti kurgans closely resemble those of the preceding Kura–Araxes culture.[23]

The conspicuous display of wealth in Trialeti kurgans, a feature shared with other nearby cultures exhibiting similar funerary traditions, is of particular historical significance. This pattern likely reflects influence from more ancient civilizations to the south, particularly those in the Fertile Crescent.[24] The ceramic tradition of the Trialeti–Vanadzor culture is believed to have contributed to the development of the Late Bronze Age Transcaucasian ware, which later spread widely across modern eastern Turkey. This diffusion has been linked to the movement and influence of the Mushki.[11]

Possible Proto-Armenian Connections

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The Trialeti-Vanadzor culture is frequently considered a strong candidate for the Proto-Armenian cultural horizon, with multiple academic perspectives supporting this hypothesis. Flourishing in the South Caucasus during the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2400–1500 BCE), this culture exhibits substantial linguistic, genetic, and material continuities with later Armenian archaeological traditions. Scholars such as Sandra Scham (2025) propose that the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture, emerging in the Armenian Highlands and eastern Anatolia, may reflect one of the earliest Indo-European cultural formations in the region, potentially linked to the nascent stages of Armenian ethnogenesis.[25] This view aligns with earlier propositions by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (1995), who identified parallels between Indo-European burial customs and the kurgan tombs characteristic of Trialeti-Vanadzor sites.[26]

Genetic studies have added compelling evidence for continuity in the Armenian Highlands. Research by Iosif Lazaridis et al. (2022) confirmed that modern Armenians show strong genetic ties to ancient South Caucasus populations, with notable Bronze Age components linked to steppe ancestry (e.g., R1b-Z2103), suggesting a deep-rooted presence in the region since at least the Trialeti-Vanadzor period.[27] This supports prior findings by Haber et al. (2015), indicating that the Bronze Age admixture in the region shaped the modern Armenian gene pool.[28] Recent archaeogenetic research by Petrosyan and Palyan (2025) further demonstrates that steppe-derived populations migrated into the Armenian Highlands during the mid-3rd millennium BCE, contributing significantly to the formation of regional cultures such as Trialeti-Vanadzor, Sevan-Artsakh, Van-Urmia, and Lchashen-Metsamor. Their findings reveal that even by the end of the Urartian period, the population in the region still retained a high proportion of steppe patrilineal DNA (up to 75%), lending strong support to the Etiuni hypothesis of Armenian ethnogenesis and suggesting that the language of these Bronze and Iron Age cultures was Proto-Armenian.[29]

Archaeologically, the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture’s elaborate burial practices—such as the use of four-wheeled carts, gold ornaments, and ritual animal sacrifices—mirror Indo-European traditions and find echoes in later Armenian sites like Metsamor and Lchashen.[30] Kossian (1997) further highlights ceramic and metallurgical continuities that suggest a direct cultural lineage from Trialeti-Vanadzor through the Lchashen-Metsamor horizon.[31] Joan Aruz (2008) emphasizes that these material and symbolic continuities place Armenian ethnogenesis within a broader network of Bronze Age Indo-European cultures stretching across Anatolia and the Aegean, as evidenced by shared artifact types such as cauldrons and chariots.[32]

Linguistic studies reinforce these connections: the Armenian language, while a unique branch of the Indo-European family, shares phonological and lexical similarities with Greek, suggesting a shared contact zone within the broader Yamnaya horizon during the Bronze Age. [33] Using a mathematical analysis borrowed from evolutionary biology, Donald Ringe and Tandy Warnow propose an evolutionary tree in which Pre-Armenian and Pre-Greek formed a closely related subgroup after 2500 BC.[34] Similarly, David W. Anthony suggests that Pre-Armenian had already begun to separate as early as 2800 BC.[35] These overlapping lines of evidence have led many scholars to posit the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture as a crucial stage in the long trajectory of Armenian ethnogenesis, although debates continue regarding the precise origins and development of the Proto-Armenians.[36]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Munchaev 1994, p. 16; cf., Kushnareva and Chubinishvili 1963, pp. 16 ff.
  2. ^ The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia - Page 266 by Philip L. Kohl
  3. ^ John A. C. Greppin and I. M. Diakonoff, "Some Effects of the Hurro-Urartian People and Their Languages upon the Earliest Armenians" Journal of the American Oriental Society Vol. 111, No. 4 (Oct.–Dec. 1991), p. 721 [1]
  4. ^ Joan Aruz, Kim Benzel, Jean M. Evans, Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) [2] (2008) p. 92
  5. ^ Kossian, Aram V. (1997), The Mushki Problem Reconsidered pp. 254
  6. ^ Sandra Scham. An Archaeology of Persecuted Peoples: Religion and Hate in the Mountains of Asia. Routledge. 2025. "Later in the Bronze Age (2200–1600 BCE), the Trialeti culture arose in Armenia. This may have been the first Indo-European culture and possibly the origin of what would become Armenian culture."
  7. ^ Петросян, Армен; Палян, Арам (2025). "Проблема происхождения армян в свете последних археогенетических данных". Индоевропейское языкознание и классическая филология (in Russian). XXIX (2). Санкт-Петербург: Российская академия наук: 201. doi:10.30842/ielcp2306901529084. Archaeogenetic data convincingly prove the migration of people across the Caucasus from the East European steppes to the South Caucasus and the Armenian Highland from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. Those migrants and their descendants created the Trialeti-Vanadzor, Sevan-Artsakh, Van-Urmia and Lchashen-Metsamor cultures of the Middle, Late Bronze and Iron Ages. Even at the end of the kingdom of Urartu (7th–6th centuries BC) the local population in the territory of modern Armenia (the land Etiuni of Urartian sources) still had a significant steppe patrilineal DNA (75%). Armenian had to be the language of the creators of those cultures, and archeogenetic data testify in favor of the Etiuni hypothesis of the origin of Armenians.
  8. ^ Robert Hewsen. Armenia: A Historical Atlas. University of Chicago Press. 2001. p. 22.
  9. ^ Kosyan, Aram (2014). "To the East of Hatti". In Özfırat, Aynur (ed.). Essays in Honour of Veli Sevin. Yayinlari. p. 279.
  10. ^ a b Serkan Demirel, "A Contribution to Localization of Azzi-Hayaša Mentioned in Hittite Cuneiform Texts." Archivum Anatolicum-Anadolu Arşivleri (ArAn) 2017. pp. 97–110. https://www.academia.edu/38267672
  11. ^ a b Kossian, Aram V. (1997), The Mushki Problem Reconsidered pp. 260–261
  12. ^ a b Geraldine Reinhardt, Bronze Age in Eurasia Lecture Delivered 29 July 1991; Archived 21 JUL 2015
  13. ^ a b Joan Aruz, Sarah B. Graff, Yelena Rakic, Cultures in Contact: From Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean in the Second Millennium B.C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013 ISBN 1588394751 p.12
  14. ^ Daniel T. Potts, A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Volume 94 of Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. John Wiley & Sons, 2012 ISBN 1405189886 p.681
  15. ^ Aynur ÖZFIRAT (2008), THE HIGHLAND PLATEAU OF EASTERN ANATOLIA IN THE SECOND MILLENNIUM BCE: MIDDLE/LATE BRONZE AGES
  16. ^ a b "Trialeti culture". Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-02-16.
  17. ^ Edens, Christopher (Aug–Nov 1995). "Transcaucasia at the End of the Early Bronze Age". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 299/300 (The Archaeology of Empire in Ancient Anatolia). The American Schools of Oriental Research: 60, 53–64. doi:10.2307/1357345. JSTOR 1357345. S2CID 163585471.
  18. ^ Պատմության խոսուն վկաները. Քարաշամբի քառասունդարյա գավաթը
  19. ^ Հայացք բրոնզե դարից, Ալբոմ-կատալոգ, Հայաստանի պատմության թանգարան, Երևան, 2016, էջ 160. (A Glance from the Bronze Age, History Museum of Armenia, Yerevan, 2016, p. 160.)
  20. ^ The Peoples of the Hills: Ancient Ararat and Caucasus. Charles Burney and David Marshall Lang, pp. 90–96.
  21. ^ "The Beginnings of Metallurgy". www.geocities.ws.
  22. ^ Edens, p. 56
  23. ^ Edens, p. 58
  24. ^ Edens, p. 59; see generally
  25. ^ Scham, Sandra. An Archaeology of Persecuted Peoples: Religion and Hate in the Mountains of Asia. Routledge, 2025.
  26. ^ Gamkrelidze, T.V. & Ivanov, V.V. Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans. Mouton de Gruyter, 1995.
  27. ^ Lazaridis, I. et al. "The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe." Science, Vol. 377, Issue 6609, 2022.
  28. ^ Haber, M. et al. "Genetic evidence for an origin of the Armenians from Bronze Age mixing of multiple populations." Eur. J. Hum. Genet. 24, 2015.
  29. ^ Петросян, Армен; Палян, Арам (2025). "Проблема происхождения армян в свете последних археогенетических данных". Индоевропейское языкознание и классическая филология (in Russian). XXIX (2). Санкт-Петербург: Российская академия наук (Russian Academy of Sciences): 201. doi:10.30842/ielcp2306901529084. Archaeogenetic data convincingly prove the migration of people across the Caucasus from the East European steppes to the South Caucasus and the Armenian Highland from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. Those migrants and their descendants created the Trialeti-Vanadzor, Sevan-Artsakh, Van-Urmia and Lchashen-Metsamor cultures of the Middle, Late Bronze and Iron Ages. Even at the end of the kingdom of Urartu (7th–6th centuries BC) the local population in the territory of modern Armenia (the land Etiuni of Urartian sources) still had a significant steppe patrilineal DNA (75%). Armenian had to be the language of the creators of those cultures, and archeogenetic data testify in favor of the Etiuni hypothesis of the origin of Armenians.
  30. ^ Greppin, J.A.C. & Diakonoff, I.M. "Some Effects of the Hurro-Urartian People and Their Languages upon the Earliest Armenians." JAOS, Vol. 111, No. 4, 1991, p. 721.
  31. ^ Kossian, A.V. "The Mushki Problem Reconsidered." SMEA, 39(2), 1997.
  32. ^ Aruz, Joan. Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.
  33. ^ Greppin, J.A.C. & Diakonoff, I.M. (1991).
  34. ^ Anthony, David W. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 56–58. ISBN 978-0-691-05887-0.
  35. ^ Anthony, David W. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-691-05887-0.
  36. ^ Anthony, David W. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. Princeton University Press, 2007.
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