This project is a development of previous investigations carried out respectively in Azerbaijan, on the salt mine of Duzdagi and the settlement of Ovçular Tepesi, and in Georgia, on the gold mines and related landscape of Sakdrissi/Dzedzvebi. Our research programme will take place in two regions: 1) the Naxçivançay valley in Azerbaijan (Nakhchivan); 2) the Mashavera valley in Georgia. Our work will concentrate on the early mining and associated mining economy of salt and gold, but also copper, since major copper mines (Misdagi) are attested in Nakhchivan in the vicinity of the Duzdagi, together with several Late Prehistoric settlements. The main objectives of this project will be to study the conditions (social, economic, technological, environmental) that presided over the development of early mining in the Caucasus (salt, copper and gold), with a special focus on the reasons why early mining was so intimately linked to the Kuro-Araxes cultural complex. Our goal is to complete the information so far retrieved from the mines themselves (Duzdagi and Sakdrissi) by data to be obtained from the miners’ settlements (Kültepe I and Dzedzvebi), especially as concerns technology, socio-economic structures and subsistence strategies. In Nakhchivan, work on early mining and the mining economy will be extended to the copper mines of Misdagi and the coppersmiths’settlement of Zirinçlik. In both Georgia and Azerbaijan, archaeological excavations and surveys will be associated with specific environmental studies in order to complete our data on subsistence strategies. Another aim of these studies will be to reconstruct the environmental setting in which these new technologies (mining, metallurgy) developed. Isotope analyses carried on animal teeth (caprines) will also help to assess the nature of pastoral herding (local/long-distance) and provide indirect clues to the intensity of interregional exchange (goods, animals, people). The extension of the mining economy, as well as the impact of new technologies upon surrounding regions, will also be studied through provenance studies on gold and copper artefacts from Caucasian sites (Ovçular Tepesi, Kültepe I, Zirinçlik, Dzedzvebi, Soyuk Bulaq, Sioni) but also from Eastern Anatolia (Arslantepe) and Northwestern Iran (site ?). Several operations are planned: in Nakhchivan, work will be divided into excavations and surveys: 1) excavations on the salt mine of Duzdagi, inside the tunnels; 2) excavations on the miners’ settlement of Kültepe I (1 ha); 3) excavations on the coppersmiths’ settlement of Zirinçlik (0,2 ha); 4) surveys on the copper mine of Misdagi. All these sites are known for their significant remains of Kuro-Araxes exploitation or settlement. In Georgia, work will focus on Dzedzvebi, which is an outstanding settlement (60 ha) located on a plateau at the foot of the Sakdrissi gold mine. Previous, small-scale excavations on this site have yielded Kuro-Araxes graveyards, workshop-areas related to gold-processing, as well as domestic quarters. Emphasis will be laid on the reconstruction of the chaîne opératoire through experimental studies and the econometrics of gold production, in order to assess the quantity of excavated gold. In this project, Kültepe I/Duzdagi represents an earlier (ca. 4500-3800 BC), Zirinçlik/Misdagi an intermediate (ca. 4000-3500 BC) and the Maschavera group a later step (ca. 3400-3000 BC) of the Kuro-Araxes culture and its mining development. Beside archaeological operations, the coring of marshy areas both in Georgia and Azerbaijan should provide mineralogical and organic proxies (insects, pollens, molluscs) in order to document the interactions between the evolution of the climate, the vegetation cover and pastoral herding. These operations will be completed by the study of the erosion/accumulation sequences within the embedded watersheds of the Naxçivançay, the Arpaçay (Nakhchivan) and the Mashavera rivers (Georgia).

ALMAS (the Arabic word for ‘diamond’), is an international and interdisciplinary consortium composed of excellent scientific partners based in different countries of Europe and America and aiming at renewing the study of the living and extinct languages of South Arabia (Oman, southwestern Saudi Arabia, Yemen). All these languages belong to the Semitic family and fall into three ‘fields’, which have up to now corresponded largely to separate academic traditions with few interconnections: a set of four ‘Ancient South Arabian’ languages (ASA), now extinct (Sabaic, Qatabanic, Minaic, Hadramitic); a group of six living ‘Modern South Arabian’ (MSA) languages with no written tradition, all endangered (Mehri, Harsusi, Bathari, Hobyot, Jibbali, Soqotri); a rich array of highly diversified and archaic Arabic vernaculars spoken throughout the region (‘South Arabian Arabic’: SAA). In order to disentangle the complex linguistic landscape of South Arabia, ALMAS has been designed around seven scientific tasks: three field-specific tasks concern the investigation of the individual languages (ASA, MSA, SAA); four transversal tasks are organized according to different lines of action: contact linguistics, phonetics and phonology, morphology and Semitic comparison. ALMAS will apply a threefold scientific methodology relying on (1) the already available original sources, (2) the collection of new data and (3) the IT treatment of both these groups of sources. First, a systematic re-examination of the literature and of the text critical editions will be undertaken, which is an essential pre-requisite to any research. Secondly, ALMAS will conduct regular fieldwork seasons in two of the modern countries of South Arabia, in order to collect new epigraphic and oral data. Finally, ALMAS will treat all relevant data through the most modern IT tools for digitization and exploitation of linguistic data. The novelty of ALMAS lies in the interdisciplinary synergy it creates in three ways: by cross-fertilizing synchronic and diachronic approaches to the abovementioned languages; by stimulating contacts between researchers of the three ‘fields’ of the project; by developing complementarity between linguists from different schools and approaches. ALMAS will set a landmark in the domain, by documenting the languages through fieldwork and creating a digitally-enhanced open-access database, thus contributing to the study and the protection of these languages; analyzing the data in order to reach an adequate understanding of the languages’ structures; reevaluating the relationships between the languages (phylogenetic relatedness and/or language contact). Moreover, as ALMAS focuses on endangered or understudied languages, it will have a vast socio-cultural impact In particular, ALMAS will help preserve linguistic heritage; foster cultural awareness among speakers of minority languages; influence educational policies and practices. In order to support the efforts of the consortium and all its manifold activities, the project includes dedicated structures for the scientific and administrative management of the network. A technical task intends to develop a web-based system to manage, analyze and share the study material and the scientific results of the project. Finally, ALMAS results will be disseminated through a diversified dissemination and exploitation plan addressed to different settings in the Western world and in the Arab countries (scientific milieu, governments, education, broad public).

The “Neolithic way of life" developed in the Caucasus ca. 6200 BCE, which is fairly late when compared with the astonishing steps taken by Near-Eastern cultures in the neighbouring Fertile Crescent as early as the 9th mill. BC. The existence of organic links between the Neolithisation process of the Near-East and that of the Caucasus is still a matter of debate, but the Caucasus no doubt appears as a marginal, backward area in the overall dynamics that shaped part of South-western Asia in the early Holocene. During the following period, i.e. the Chalcolithic, these dynamics seemingly changed completely and South-Western Asia underwent a progressive shift in its centre of gravity: some time ca. the 5th-4th mill. BC, a change in circulation flows appeared in the obsidian procurement strategies of Iranian and north Mesopotamian communities, which started to exploit Caucasian obsidian beds as well, instead of focusing on East Anatolian deposits. This shift in obsidian sourcing networks is coeval with the development of major technical innovations such as extractive copper metallurgy and the production of wool fabrics, which led to the systematic exploitation of a new range of raw materials (salt and metal ores) and probably entailed the appropriation of new territories - the Highlands. At any rate, it appears that Transcaucasia became a major source of attraction for human groups living in Iran, North Mesopotamia and beyond from the Late Chalcolithic onwards (ca. 4500 BCE), as shown by the number of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age sites found in the Araxes and Urmiah basins. How should these profound, structural, changes be interpreted? The explanation that leaps to mind is of course that major changes in economic flows were prompted by technical innovations. We need to test this hypothesis by breaking down the intricate relationships between the development of these innovations, the quest for raw materials, and the rise of other practices, such as vertical pastoralism or long-distance nomadism. Indeed, innovations, which may be technological or zootechnological, may have involved the migrations and/or increasing mobility of human groups living in the Near and Middle East, as claimed by several studies. But the processes underlying the changes in economic flows are still poorly understood, while the reality of human migrations from the Near-East towards the Caucasus during the 4th mill. BC has been actively challenged. Altogether, it is the agency of Late Prehistoric Caucasian communities that is being debated, between a centre-vs-periphery perspective that considers the Highlands as a mere source of raw materials, exploited by the proto-urban communities of the lowlands, and an analytical stance that places the evolution of the Caucasus within the complexity of Eurasian dynamics in Late Prehistory, which integrates not only the Near and Middle East but also the Pontic universe and the northern steppes. Thus, this project lies at the core of on-going international research on: a) the neolithisation processes of the Caucasus, b) the interactions between the Caucasus and the Near and Middle-East from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Considering the state of the art, we have three goals in mind: i) the study of the Caucasian Neolithic, as seen from the Araxes basin, with a special emphasis on its possible connections with the Neolithic communities of the Fertile Crescent; ii) the study of interregional economic networks between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, in relationship with the emergence of new economic hubs; iii) the study of the human mosaic developing in the Highlands during the 4th mill., with a view to identifying the various cultural groups involved in what appears as a "copper rush".

Sharing and reuse of archaeological or historical data: a RDF-based description according to semantic web repositories and standards The HisArc-RDF project brings together a multidisciplinary consortium: archaeology, history, geography, terminology, bibliography and informatics. The pooling of experiences, based on the sharing and articulation of methods and software and semantic tools developed in each discipline, will make it possible to prototype (implementation and iterative tests) a "FAIR" operating chain on structurally and semantically heterogeneous archaeological and historical data sets: - to write a data management plan (DMP) for each dataset, based on the recommendations of the European Union and the french National Open Science Plan; - to develop two softwares : the first one operating a webservice between the OntoME tools (matching ontologies tool) designed by a community of historians and Opentheso (aligning thesauri tool) designed with a community of archaeologists; the second one creating a generic supervised automatic alignment interface between Opentheso and any semantic web repository; - to document each test set by a fine-grained processing chain, based on the use of microthesauri, descriptor concepts aligned with semantic web repositories, and then on the matching of the ontology expressed by the thesauri with the reference standards and ontologies of the documentary and scientific communities; thanks to the software developed, this phase will lead to a RDF-structured description of the test datasets; thus allowing, after online publication, the reporting and direct reuse ("calculability") of the datas; - to lead a wide network of historical and archaeological stakeholders (repository supports, multidisciplinary research groups, programmed and preventive archaeologies, European and non-European sites, academic and private stakeholders) through a training programme and experimental workshops, in order to disseminate the good practices supported and expressed by the operating chain and the tools developed during the project. The foundation of the HisArc-RDF project is threefold: a convergence of views born from the confrontation of multidisciplinary practices and experiences around the life cycle of data, from its acquisition to its publication, sharing and mediation; an acculturation of archaeological and historical communities to the practical and scientific challenge of aligning their vocabularies on semantic web core repositories; and finally the need for a processing chain capable of appropriation by these communities - i. e.i.e. as close as possible to business practices and work in the field and laboratories. The outcome of the project will be the realization and open publication of a methodology and associated tools in order to implement in our disciplines an ecosystem of "FAIR" data production, publication and sharing. It will be based on a proof of concept: the targeted user experience is the sharing and effective reuse of data extracted from recording systems (raw data), regardless of the structure specific to a particular database; it is the responsibility of each operating interface/visualization to pick them up and configure them to allow their reuse. The rapid implementation of these linked open data will be at the service of the widest possible academic audience: students, museums and research teams.

EVOSHEEP proposes to document how Near Eastern and Middle Eastern societies developed sheep farming and how this influenced their history using a multidisciplinary approach drawing on evidence from different sources: archaeozoology, philology, iconography and paleogenetics from a wide temporal (6000-1000 BC) and geographic scale (Near East and Middle East, the Caucasus). This approach conducted on ancient breeds will be completed by work on modern breeds (sheep with hairy fleece or hair from Lebanon, Iran, Ethiopia) to provide new biometric and genetic reference records more adequate than European races for further scientific research. The originality of EVOSHEEP is to combine morphometric and genetic data from ancient and modern breeds to document the pace of the emergence of sheep breed in the course of the complexification of Near and Middle Eastern societies.