Menteştəpə İlk tunc dövrü kurqanı: xronoloji paradoks

Abstract

The existence of a specific kurgan`s type in the Early Bronze Age in the northwestern region of present-day Northern Azerbaijan, along the eastern piedmont of the Lesser Caucasus was identified by archaeologists. Kurgans of this type that existed in the period of the early stage of the Kura-Araxes (KA) culture entered into the scientific circulation as "underkurgan crypts”. Specific factors (burial rite, ceramics) sharply differ from and the characteristic features of the KA culture and the previous late-chalcolithic Leilatepe culture (the first researcher to point out this was B.Jalilov). It is necessary to recognize certain similarity of some elements of the funeral rite between the monuments of the underkugan crypts and the collective burial in the toloses of the period Namazga III (Turkmenistan) 3200-2800 BC. This similarity can while be explained as a manifestation of convergence. 14С dates from the Early Bronze burial mound of Menteshtepe (Republic of Azerbaijan, Tovuz region, Ashaghy Eyyublu village) showed that the underkurgan chamber-crypt had been functioned within 600 years, and that have created diverging opinions on the issue. Since radiocarbon dates of a similar type of burial mounds of Shadılı and Uzun Reme showed only 100-150 years of activity of those underkurgan chambers-crypts. In our opinion, some of the samples, whichh gave a more ancient date, had no direct relationship with of "biography" of the crypt. Based on the data of archaeological excavations, it is possible to put forward a working hypothesis that the cultural population of mobile pastoralists, who hadn`t long-term settlements, carriers of the rite of "underkurgan crypts" appeared in the XXXIV cent. BC. This population was not associated with the existing carriers of the early phase of the KA culture. In 3000-2900 BC in connection with the invasion of the KA culture to this territory, this population disappears.