A Long-term History of Cross-cultural Transfers in the Caucasus

Abstract

A meeting organized at Khazar University in Baku, Azerbaijan, served as a starting point for the study of characteristic crossbreeds of the Caucasus area in the long term, from Antiquity to the end of the Soviet period.We are not proposing here a general history of the Caucasus it is rather a question of concentrating strictly on the phenomena of transfer - historical, literary, linguistic, archeological and aesthetic - as a shaping principle in this region over a long history prior to the disappearance of the USSR.The challenge here is to apply a new approach to cultural areas of paradigmatic complexity, using the various tools available and the skills of recognized specialists from the relevant regions and from the history of the social sciences to linguistics, through the history of cities and archeology.