An Early Bronze Age South Caucasian culture with developed metallurgy.
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The Kura-Araxes (Mtkvari-Araxes) culture is an Early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the South Caucasus, lasting roughly from the late 4th to the late 3rd millennium BC. It is named after the rivers Kura (Mtkvari) and Araxes.
Its hallmark is a distinctive hand-made black-burnished pottery (black outside, reddish inside), together with portable clay hearths and andirons. People lived in round and rectangular houses and practised farming, herding and early metallurgy.
From its South Caucasian heartland the culture spread to eastern Anatolia, north-western Iran and the Levant, where its pottery is known as «Khirbet Kerak ware».
In Georgia, Kura-Araxes sites have yielded pottery, bronze tools and weapons; finds are kept in museums, including at Sighnaghi and Tbilisi.