Guney Kafkasya Mil Bozkrlarnda Neolitik - Renkli Bir Mozaik (1)
85 The Neolithic in the South Caucasian Mil Steppe: A Diverse Mosaic - Barbara Helwing and Tevekkül Aliyev sections with organic fill and cultural refuse as well as sections with clean fill.
In both sites, there is a clear concentric layout of the ditches, but their function remains
enigmatic. In MPS 124, the fill was sterile, while in MPS 4 at least some areas must have hosted
organic materials—maybe storage compounds or the like. A micromorphological study of these
organic residues revealed possible matting residues and cooking refuse,
26 which would concur
with the observation that the sections with organic deposits also contained quantities of smashed
ceramics and broken artifacts.
These two ditch sites are the first such monuments recognized in the southern Caucasus.
This discovery is certainly the result of the systematic application of magnetometry mapping.
Sections of linear ditches have previously been reported from Neolithic sites in South Caucasia,
27 and in Aruchlo, linear ditches crosscut each other and also cut into settlement layers; at a later
stage domestic buildings were constructed atop the ditches.
28 Given its small size, the layout of
MPS 4 closely resembles the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic henge monuments known in eastern
and central Europe.
The ditches at MPS 4 represent but one phase in a palimpsest of occupations in this place
that, however, fall closely together, as radiocarbon dating assigns the site to the 56
th
century BCE.
The oldest exposed remains are those of a subterranean round building with walls made from
small hand-shaped mudbrick (Fig. 6). It contained the residues of a shell bead workshop where
didacna shells, likely from the Caspian shore, were processed.
29 The latest occupation was a
house-floor inside the inner ditch that was preserved only in small patches and did not yield a
clear outer contour. Inside the house, storage vessels had been set into the floor, of which only the
bases remain.
