Event: Pizza Talk: "Rediscovering Masis Blur: A Neolithic Settlement in the Ararat Plain, Armenia"

Speaker: Kristine Martirosyan-Olshansky, Ph.D. Candidate, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA

This talk is a summary of field research conducted by Cotsen/UCLA doctoral student Kristine Martirosyan-Olshansky at Masis Blur, Armenia, over the course of three seasons from 2012-2014. Excavations at Masis Blur have unearthed Neolithic habitation layers (ca. 6200 – 5400 cal.BC) belonging to the Shulaveri-Shomutepe culture, with a rich material culture and several important new discoveries. Many questions have been raised concerning the origins and sudden appearance in the Southern Caucasus of sedentary communities having fully domesticated plants and animals. The abrupt abandonment of their settlements at the end of the Neolithic period is also still just as obscure. Certain cultural elements and fragments of imported pottery within otherwise Aceramic settlements attest to relations with societies in northern Mesopotamian area. This talk highlights findings from recent fieldwork at Masis Blur and discusses the new data within the framework of Neolithization processes in the Southern Caucasus.