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# Settlement Organization and Early State Formation in the Iori-Alazani Interfluve: Evidence from the Ancient City of Didnauri

## Details

**Authors** Konstantine Pitskhelauri

**Year** 2026

**Publisher** International Journal of Archaeology

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Archaeology

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ija.20261402.12) 
10.11648/j.ija.20261402.12

## In authors' words

### Abstract

The emergence of early state societies in the South Caucasus remains a fundamental issue in Near Eastern archaeology. This study examines the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age settlement system of the Iori-Alazani interfluve in eastern Georgia, with particular emphasis on the recently discovered ancient city of Didnauri, to evaluate its significance for understanding the development of complex socio-political organization. Drawing upon archaeological evidence from settlement patterns, fortifications, urban planning, funerary practices, material culture, and regional landscape analysis, the paper argues that the Iori-Alazani interfluve constituted an integrated and hierarchically organized territorial system rather than a collection of isolated communities. Didnauri, covering approximately 35 hectares and enclosed by monumental defensive walls, functioned as the principal administrative, economic, and ritual center within a wider network of fortified and rural settlements. The archaeological record demonstrates increasing social differentiation, centralized resource management, specialized craft production, and long-distance cultural interactions linking eastern Georgia with Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia, and the broader Ancient Near East. These features collectively indicate the emergence of institutions capable of coordinating large-scale labor, territorial administration, and economic organization. The study further argues that the development of social complexity in eastern Georgia resulted from indigenous processes of political centralization, combined with the selective adaptation of external cultural influences, rather than from direct diffusion from established Near Eastern states.

### What they set out to do (purpose)

Evaluate whether the Iori-Alazani region (eastern Georgia) represents an early, indigenous state-formation process centered on the newly discovered city of Didnauri.

### Who or what was studied (sample)

Late Bronze–Early Iron Age settlement remains in the Iori-Alazani interfluve, South Caucasus (single-region archaeological survey).

### How they did it (methods)

Comparative settlement-pattern and landscape archaeology drawing on fortifications, urban planning, funerary practice, material culture, and regional survey data.

### What they found (results)

The 35-hectare fortified center of Didnauri functioned as the administrative, economic, and ritual hub of a hierarchically nested network of fortified and rural settlements, indicating an indigenous process of early state formation in the South Caucasus.

## Commentary

### In short

The finding shows a societal whole organized as a hierarchically nested system of parts, with a central settlement coordinating a wider network of subordinate settlements within a larger territorial polity.

**Patterns it shows** S

**Added** 2026-09-16

**How to cite this** Konstantine Pitskhelauri (2026). Settlement Organization and Early State Formation in the Iori-Alazani Interfluve: Evidence from the Ancient City of Didnauri. International Journal of Archaeology.