Preliminary Results from the Gardabani Archaeological Survey (GAS), Republic of Georgia

Abstract

Despite representing the heartland of the Shulaveri-Shomu Neolithic “culture” and the Sioni/Tsopi Chalcolithic “culture,” the Gardabani region in the Republic of Georgia is a virtual terra incognita for archaeological survey and excavation. In the summer of 2019, the Gardabani Archaeological Survey project conducted a regional pedestrian survey to document the area and understand how its settlement patterns compared, both synchronically and diachronically, to those in adjacent regions studied by the Gadachrili Gora Archaeological Survey and the Marneuli Valley Survey Project. Another goal of the project was to start developing a predictive model to help identify new Neolithic sites, and which could eventually also be used to identify new Chalcolithic sites. This article presents the methods employed during the first field season of the Gardabani Archaeological Survey project, the results of the surveys carried out during this season, and the results of the excavations conducted at two of the surveyed sites.