Areni-1 Cave

The excavations by the Joint Project of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, and the University College Cork, Ireland (co-directors Boris Gasparyan, Gregory E. Areshian, and Ron Pinhasi), conducted in 2007–2010 at the Areni-1 cave complex in the middle part of the Arpa River Valley (Vayots Dzor Province, Armenia), have already generated major international interest among scholars, the mass media, and the general public. This is due to several factors, most notably the outstanding preservation of organic material belonging to the later phases (ca. 4200–3500 BCE) of the Chalcolithic which is nearly unprecedented in Near Eastern archaeology (Areshian et al. 2012; Barnard et al. 2011; Pinhasi et al. 2010). The most significant finds of 2007–2009 included the world’s oldest leather shoe known at present, the wine-pressing installation (excavations of which were completed in 2010), enigmatic clay structures inside the cave galleries, a number of copper artifacts, and a heterogeneous assemblage of pottery reflective of long-distance cultural interactions.