Burial Customs between the Late Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age in the Shida Kartli Region of Georgia

The paper analyses the development of burial customs in the Shida Kartli region of Georgia from the Late Chalcolithic until the end of the Early Bronze Age, especially focusing on the Kura-Araxes culture and on the culture (Martqopi, Bedeni) of the following Early Kurgan period. It summarises available evidence in the light of a recent revision carried out in the framework of the “Georgian-Italian Shida Kartli Archaeological Project” and compares it with contemporary evidence from the neighbouring regions of the Southern Caucasus and of the Upper Turkish Euphrates region. Analogies and differences are highlighted and analysed, with a special attention to the diffusion of barrow graves (kurgans), in the general framework of diachronic developments in interregional relations in the 4th and 3rd millennium BC