The Reassessment of the Stratigraphy of Khovle Gora

Abstract

Excavations at the multi-layered site of Khovle Gora, conducted from 1954 to 1961, made an important contribution to the relative chronology of ceramic development in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age of Georgia. This work remains a fundamental reference for the Shida Kartli region and beyond due to its close cultural relation with the burial ground and the eponymous material culture of Samtavro. More recent investigations by the Georgian-Austrian expedition at Khovle Gora have comprehensively reconstructed the earlier excavations, laying the basis for a general reassessment of the stratigraphy and dating of the settlement sequence. The results largely confirm Muskhelishvili’s stratigraphic classification of pottery development but propose a new, considerably shorter chronology of this sequence based on radiocarbon dates, exclusively to the Early Iron Age.