Notes of Material Importance: Archival Archaeology in the South Caucasus

published in Archive Journal (August 2017)

This article explores the role of archaeological archives in untangling the ancient history of the South Caucasus. Archaeological datasets are uniquely diachronic. They reflect historical and environmental processes that occurred in antiquity, as well as the research questions, excavation methods and recording practices that surround their discovery. Archaeologists working in the South Caucasus, a region with a complex modern history, grapple with an archaeological record that is fragmented along myriad geopolitical, linguistic, institutional and historiographic axes. The archives discussed here are different in period, format, scope, and intent, but they each provide context for the shape and nature of our inherited archaeological datasets: understanding them allows us to reach a fuller interpretation of antiquity.