Investigating population dynamics in the Southern Caucasus: Current progress and future steps

This paper presents a summary of the current special issue: “Investigating human population dynamics against paleoecological oscillations in the southern Caucasus”. Here, we will discuss the main thematic issues that tie the various papers together, in an attempt to weave them into an overarching narrative. We will start by exploring the meanings of the core concept of this volume – the concept of population dynamics. We will then turn to the three main axes to which all papers relate: The first axis is the question of the spatial extent of a “viable” population. We utilize the model suggested by Whallon (2006) with which we compare the local records of Southwest Asia during MIS 3. The second axis is the question of carrying capacity and the contribution of the environmental records to factoring this notion into the spatial model suggested by Whallon. The third axis is that of time and contemporaneity between sites’ individual histories of accumulation and the regional and inter-regional records. In sum, this summary paper, together with the papers in this special issue, aims to elucidate the economic, demographic, and social mechanisms shaping the life ways of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers of the Southern Caucasus. The results of this exercise may suggest a scenario where parallel socio-demographic processes shaped the Middle Paleolithic as well as the transition(s) to Upper Paleolithic across Southwest Asia.