History, Archaeology, Ethnography
The Mtkvari-Araksi Culture was formed in TransCaucasus in the early Bronze Age. During the process of its development it covered quite a big territory including Northeast Caucasus, Eastern Anatolia and Northwest of Iran. Inside this culture scholars extract a several local options.
General ideas of ethnic belonging of the population of Mtkvari-Araksi Culture greatly differ. In Mtkvari-Araksi unity the scholars suppose the family of Ibero-Caucasian languages, Georgian and Khuritic people and Indo-European peoples as well.
The author discusses some specific features of Indo-European participation in the population of Mtkvari-Araksi ethnic group and notes that existence of wheeled transport, horses and burial mounds in TransCaucasus takes beginning from the final stage of above mentioned culture and is habitually linked to the expansion of new cultures such as Earlymound, Bedenic and Trialeti Cultures. Also penetration of Indo-European novelties is not necessarily realized from the South. If we suppose penetration of the wheeled transport from the South it does not necessarily mean that we reject the idea that it is characteristic to Indo-European culture as the earliest carts are known from the times of Mesopotamia. As for the burial mounds, it seems that they were imported from the North. Horses appeared in TransCaucasus from the second half of the second millenium and were widely used in the areas situated to the North as well as to the South. Horses and burial mounds existed in the North from the second half of the forth millenium. This absolutely excludes their penetration from Asia via TransCaucasus.
That is why the participation of Indo-European people in the process of formation of the Mtkvari-Araksi Culture according to the above mentioned points is not considered proper by the author.
If the above mentioned points may be considered as characteristic to Indo-European ethnic group, than supposedly they have appeared in the TransCaucasus later in the following stage of Mtkvari-Araksi Culture and not only from the South but North as well, after preEuropean unity collapsed despite the localization of its first dwellings.
S. Janashia Georgian State Museum.