The expansion of the Kura-Araxes culture in Iran: what role for Uruk?

The interpretation of the expansion of the Kura‑Araxes culture has been traditionally linked to a set of migratory mechanisms that were generated in the core of Kura‑Araxes cultural region. Little attention has been dedicated to the role of other processes that took place in the Kura‑Araxes “periphery”, and in particular to the development, in the fourth millennium, of centralised early‑state polities in Iran and Anatolia that were linked to similar developments taking place in the greater Uruk Mesopotamia. This paper will present two case‑studies to highlight the structural premises that may have favored the Kura‑Araxes “expansion” in Iran and Anatolia: Godin Tepe and Arslantepe. Between the late‑fourth and the early‑third millennium, these two sites recorded a strikingly similar cultural sequence consisting of the construction of large, possibly public, buildings characterized by a Uruk‑related material culture that were replaced by an occupation of flimsy wattle and daub huts featuring a Kura‑Araxes related material-culture. A thorough comparison of the developments illustrated by these two case‑studies can suggest a new explanatory model for the Kura‑Araxes expansion in the regions formerly involved in the Uruk “world”. According to this model, the specialized pastoral groups that were generated by the centralised economies of the early‑sate polities of the Uruk period in Iran and Anatolia may have played a key role in the following expansion of the Kura‑Araxes culture in these regions.