Michael Vickers

The British-Georgian excavation at Pichvnari 1998: the ‘Greek’ and ‘Colchian’ Cemeteries

Pichvnari lies on the Black Sea coast of Georgia, at the confluence of the Choloki and Ochkhamuri rivers, some 10km to the north of the town of Kobuleti in the Ajarian Autonomous Republic (fig 1). The site has been known since the 1950s, and excavations were carried out in both the settlement and its various cemeteries in succeeding years, under the auspices of the Batumi Archaeological Museum and the Batumi Research Institute. The site was surveyed and a notional grid-plan imposed, within which subsequent work was recorded. By the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989–90, the Pichvnari Expedition was a fixture in the Georgian archaeological calendar, but with the abrupt decline in the Georgian economy this happy state of affairs came to an end. In 1998, however, work started again in collaboration with the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. In the spring of that year, the dig-house (part of an old kolkhoz, collective farm) was restored with the aid of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust. The roof was mended, and water and electricity laid on. The first season took place in July and August, when work (briefly reported in Vickers 1998) was conducted in the areas of both the North, or ‘Colchian’, and West, or ‘Greek’, Cemeteries.