Garegin S. Tumanyan
Institute of archaeology and ethnography of NAS of Republic of Armenia
E-mail: ygstumanyan@gmail.com

Keywords: archaeological complex, dating, Transcaucasus, iron age, Cimmerian-Scythian graves.

When exploring the “Cimmerian-Scythian” sepulchers in the Transcaucasia, we faced a contradictory situation. It came out that the analogues of many closed complexes with Cimmerian- Scythian features dated to the end of VIII – VI centuries B.C. could be found in burial complexes dated to the end of II millennium – beginning of the I millennium B.C. It became apparent that to eliminate the existing contradiction in the synchronization of these complexes, it is necessary to reconsider the dating of those archeological monuments that are viewed as early but are similar to the burial complexes of Cimmerian-Scythian cultural commonality by their structure, funeral rituals, or typological composition of the goods. Such adjustments have been made before in the works of B. Kuftin, A. Iessen, A. Terenojkin, Yu. Voronov, M. Pogrebova, in which the need for “rejuvenation” of a number of closed complexes ascribed to early iron-age was emphasized.

This article discusses a number of other iron age burial complexes that have been viewed as early, but currently need to be adjusted in terms of their cultural belonging and ascribed dating. The article suggests that the lack of scientific reports of proper quality and the cases of incomplete presentation of archeological complexes in scientific publications (incomplete description, description without illustrations, etc.) contribute to this confusion in dating. The author discusses also the deficiency in applying the accepted methods of dating, when in the synchronic presence of two or more archeological cultures in a given region, an archeological complex is being dated without specifying its cultural belonging.

DOI: 10.31857/S086960630006040-3