Masis Blur Neolithic Settlement
Masis Blur is one of the first fully sedentary Neolithic villages in the Southern Caucasus (c. 6200-5400 BCE) and one of the only three known such sites in Armenia. This is a key period of change in human prehistory, during which after hundreds of thousands of years of mobility many human groups begin to settle down in permanent villages and begin to reconfigure their social, political, economic, and religious relationships. The excavations at Masis Blur help us understand how society formed and functioned during one of the most significant events in our prehistory. We gain insight into their agricultural practices and animal husbandry, long distance interactions through the study of the exchange of obsidian and imported pottery, as well as social organization and craft specialization.
Situated some 13 kilometers south of Yerevan, the settlement of Masis Blur lies in the Ararat Plain, near the ancient left bank of the Hrazdan River. The site was discovered in the spring of 1969 and in 1985-86 a team of from the Yerevan State University headed by Gregory Areshian conducted two seasons of rescue excavations. Today, Masis Blur is a mound site in name only; its upper 2.5-meter-thick cultural layers, which at the time of discovery rose above the modern surface of the plain, were bulldozed and cut down to plain level during the construction of a greenhouse complex in its vicinity in the early 1970s; the cultural deposits were used as a fill for the greenhouse foundations.
Our own joint Armenian-American work, the Masis Blur Archaeological Research Project (MBAP) is a collaboration between the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Yerevan, and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA. Our three seasons of excavations (2012-2014) have yielded very promising results and we hope to continue our research in the coming years. We seek to understand the sudden appearance of a fully agriculturalist communities in the Ararat plain during the early phase of the Late Neolithic, to understand their social organization, and their relationship to Late Neolithic settlements of Georgia and Azerbaijan.
The Areni-1 Cave site, known to the locals as the “Bird’s Cave,” is located in the middle part of the Arpa River drainage in the Vayoc Dzor province of Armenia. The cave site was used by various human groups from the Neolithic to the Medieval period, with the most intense occupation dating to the Chalcolithic period site (c. 5000-3500 BCE). The joint Armenian-American-Irish excavations at the site have been ongoing since 2007 and have a number of yielded exceptional finds.
The rockshelter area of the cave contains several household occupation layers, while the interior galleries were used for storage and secondary burial. Perhaps the most important discovery from the Chalcolithic level of the rockshelter area is an incredibly well-preserved leather shoe that has been dated to ca. 3600 BCE, making it the oldest leather show discovered thus far. Other notable finds include a 6000-year-old wine press, complete with well preserved grape pips and rachises (stems), reed matting, various grains and dried up fruits.
The cool and stable temperature inside the cave, combined with its dryness made the preservation of organic materials possible. The study of the archaeological materials, such as the pottery, stone tools, and metal objects discovered at the Areni-1 cave site suggest that the Chalcolithic communities using the cave were engaged in long-distance interactions in the region. The rare preservation of organics at the site makes it possible to investigate early exploitation and possible domestication of a variety of fruit trees, including apricots, prunes, and walnuts.