Yanik or Kura-Araxes Culture; Re-emphasizing the Kura-Araxes Culture Term Based on Pottery Statistic Analysis

The spread of Kura-Araxes pottery across the Near East from the Northeastern Anatolia to Southern Levant during the 4th and 3rd millennia B.C has been the issue of many researches and discussions. The current article showing the results of typological studies and ceramic comparisons carried out on 6 sites of the Early Bronze Age of northwest Iran. Here, the ceramic assemblage of Yanik Tepe which, sometimes has referred as so-called Yanik Culture, is considered as a comparative reference, and the assemblages from Kura-Araxes sites such as: Goey Tepe, Haftavan Tepe, Kohneh Pasgah, Kohneh Tepe, Kul Tepe Jolfa have been paralleled with 85 pottery types of Yanik described in detail by Summers. Firstly, 496 shreds from 5 sites have classified in 4 groups leading to recognition the diversity among types in 5 sites and facilitate the comparisons. This typology has also show that the sequence of types of 5 sites are not the same. In addition, the close ratio in 3 sites including Goy Tepe, Haftavan Tepe, and Kohneh Tape, has proved while this is not accrued at Kul Tape and Kohne Tepe. At the next step, the sherds have compared to Yanik pottery assemblage; The resemblance ratio of given sherds to Yanik pottery are recorded in the tables related to every site along with the descriptions related to every type helping to draw a complete picture of some shreds whose complete sample is obtained from Yanik. The compared sherds showing the similarities of 37 types of Yanik pottery; of them, 15 types include bowls of various shapes, 19 types include some types of jars and the 3 remaining types are including type 70: cooking pots, type 24: open cups, and type 74: wide shallow dishes. Among the compared types, types 19 and 25 show the most parallel with compared assemblages. Among these sites, Kul Tepe Jolfa with 14 types and Kohneh Pasgah with 6 types show the most and minimum similarities to Yanik pottery assemblage respectively. Therefore, comparisons proved that; in Goy Tepe only 13 sherds of total number of 69 potteries are comparable, and the ratio is 5.31; in Haftavan Tepe is only 10 sherds of total number of 41 shreds, and the ratio is 4.1; in Kul Tape the similarity is visible on 26 sherds of total number of 87 sherds and the ratio is 3.34; in Kohneh Pasgah only 10 sherds of total number of 67, and the ratio is 6.7; in Kohneh Tepe the only 15 shreds of total number of 232 shreds, and the ratio is 15.47. The results of carried out comparisons show that the pottery samples illustrate that there has been no intera-site interaction in between this site and other sites, and there is not significant convergent except technical characteristics of pottery production among sites. Comparisons were carried out to re-emphasize using the term Kura-Araxes to refer to the Early Bronze Age in this geographic area including the West and East of the center of Iranian plateau; aiming to reduce the multi-terminology and to use a title could explain the characteristics of this culture more comprehensively. The aim is not to eliminate this term from terminologies, but we want to emphasize on the discontinuity of using this term on the basis of the static analysis on potteries.