Pivoting East> Çadır Höyük, Transcaucasia, and complex connectivity in the Late Chalcolithic

The investigation of ‘complex connectivities’ as defined by Tomlinson (1999) is a critical element in the understanding of how the modern globalisation model has been repurposed by archaeologists to explain mechanisms at work in the archaeological past. This study applies Tomlinson’s network of complex connectivities to interpret evidence to the contemporary Kura-Araxes culture in Transcaucasia, and the north-central Anatolian plateau in the second half of the fourth millennium BCE, known as the Late Chalcolithic period, all taking place in the context of the vast Uruk system in Mesopotamia in the globalised background. We focus on the site of Çadır Höyük, on the north-central Anatolian plateau. The occupants of this rural settlement experienced some dramatic changes in the later fourth millennium, including substantial reorganisation of their village plan, expansions and contractions in socio-economic activity and long-distance trade, more elaborate burials, and possibly the evolution of new socio-political and religious ideologies. Here we explore the increasing evidence that socio-economic ‘complex connectivity’ with Transcaucasia, as well as with Mesopotamia, played some role in the substantial modifications and internal dynamics at Late Chalcolithic Çadır Höyük.