The factors and dynamics that initiated the Neolithisation process in the South Caucasus between the very end of the 7th and the beginning of the 6th millennium BCE are still unclear and hotly debated. It is within this framework that the excavations at Kiçik Tepe, in the middle Kura river valley of Western Azerbaijan, aim to offer new data and new perspectives on the complex interplay of environmental, social and cultural factors that contributed to this process. Excavations at Kiçik Tepe uncovered two main phases of occupation consisting of circular buildings dating to the first centuries of the 6th millennium. Architectural remains allowed us to highlight an evolutionary architectural trajectory hinting at social and productive changes in the role and structure of the households. The subsistence strategies that rely on species domesticated elsewhere show at once a series of specificities highlighting adaptation to the local environment and the exploitation of wild species possibly resulting from previous Mesolithic practices. Simultaneously, while the almost aceramic way of life at Kiçik Tepe outlines a local dialectic between Mesolithic and Neolithic cooking practices, lithic and macrolithic tools pinpoint broadly shared regional elements as well as very localised traits framed into both long and short distance contacts. As a whole the new evidence from Kiçik Tepe highlights that the Neolithisation in the South Caucasus was not a straightforward process that consisted of the abrupt and homogenous adoption of an exogenous ‘package’ but most probably of a gradual and complex process of change resulting from dynamics of resistance and innovation between old and new socio-economic and cultural models.

在公元前 7 世纪末至 6 世纪初之间，南高加索地区新石器化进程的启动因素和动力仍不清楚，并引起激烈争论。正是在这个框架内，在阿塞拜疆西部库拉河谷中部的 Kiçik Tepe 的发掘旨在为促成这一过程的环境、社会和文化因素的复杂相互作用提供新数据和新视角。Kiçik Tepe 的发掘发现了两个主要的占领阶段，包括可追溯到 6 世纪第一个世纪的圆形建筑。建筑遗迹使我们能够突出一个进化的建筑轨迹，暗示着家庭角色和结构的社会和生产变化。依赖在别处驯化的物种的生存策略立即显示出一系列特殊性，突出了对当地环境的适应和对可能由先前中石器时代实践产生的野生物种的开发。同时，虽然 Kiçik Tepe 近乎陶瓷的生活方式勾勒出中石器时代和新石器时代烹饪实践之间的地方辩证法，但石器和巨石器工具精确地指出了广泛共享的区域元素以及构成远距离和短距离接触的非常本地化的特征。