Manuel Castelluccia

ISMEO, Roma, Italy (manuel.castelluccia@gmail.com)

Keywords: Transcaucasia, Armenian Highland, Urartu, Early Iron Age, Late Bronze Age, Cyclopean fortress, militarization.

The territory between the upper reaches of the Euphrates, the Taurus mountains and Lake Urmia, which, starting from the 9th century BC, saw the emergence of the Urartian kingdom, is indeed a mosaic of regional powers. New investigations and research methods have significantly added a new perspective of our knowledge of the cultural landscape of ancient Transcaucasia. One of the most important links that connects the Urartian period to earlier ones is fortresses. Towards the end of the Late Bronze Age (15th – 13th cc. BCE) in the Armenian Highland and in adjoining regions the structure of society was rapidly becoming more complex, with the “military component” gaining crucial importance. So-called cyclopean fortresses begin to appear in strategically important places, usually on elevations and rocky mountain slopes. The criteria for creating a topology of the fortified settlements are the perimeter of the walls and the purpose of the edifice (Biscione, 2002). On the basis of these parameters Cyclopean fortified settlements can be divided into three main types: watchtowers, forts and fortresses proper. The strategic role of these structures could have been “active” (control over economic resources) or passive (place of refuge). Even though we have testimony of a well-developed network of fortified settlements, it is often impossible to identify, for instance, the centers from which subordinate fortresses could have been controlled. The gradual militarization of society, as ref lected in the creation of a network of fortresses, is also illustrated by other types
of archaeological data. This process of militarization was connected with the peculiar evolution of the cultures of the highlands.

DOI: 10.7868/S0869606318020058