Glass bottles from the Mtskheta archaeological sites in Georgia

As early as the stone age, settlement was evident in the Mtskheta region of Georgia, less than an hour from the capital, Tbilisi. Greater Mtskheta was located at the crossroad of routes from Colchis, North Caucasus, Armenia, and Albania. It was the junction of trade routes, including the Silk Road, connecting the east with the west.

Artifacts exhibited at the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi represent a small sample of the material found at the Mtskheta archaelogical sites. Most were found in burial mounds of the middle Bronze Age and the late Roman period.

Mtskheta was the old capital of the Kingdom of Kartli (Iberia) in East Georgia.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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