The Subsistence Economic Shift in the Southeastern of the Caspian Sea during the Early Holocene Period: Resilience or a Conscious Choice?

The interaction between humans and the environment in the southeastern Caspian Sea has always been close and reciprocal due to the region’s specific environmental features, including its proximity to mountains and the sea, the coexistence of low-lying coastal plains and high-altitude areas, access to freshwater resources, and diverse flora and fauna. Despite the archaeological importance of this region for understanding Neolithic cultural development, the mechanisms through which environmental instability influenced subsistence and technological transformations at Hotu Cave and Komishani sites remain insufficiently clarified. It is unclear whether the observed cultural changes represent passive responses to environmental stress, resilience-based adaptations, or deliberate processes of cultural niche construction. This study investigates the environmental factors that affected human occupation at those sites during the Neolithic period and examines how local communities responded to these challenges. The research focuses on the relationship between climatic and geomorphological events, including earthquakes, floods, the 10.2 ka and 8.2 ka climatic events, and fluctuations in Caspian Sea levels, and major cultural developments such as the emergence of pottery, shifts in subsistence strategies involving domesticated plants and animals (pig, sheep, and goat), and technological innovations in lithic artifacts. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative archaeological approach that integrates stratigraphic, technological, and subsistence data from Hotu Cave with comparative evidence from the Komishani open air site and regional paleoenvironmental studies. The selection of these two sites was motivated by the availability of recent excavation data that provides new and reliable evidence for reconstructing for this period and environmental dynamics in the southeastern Caspian Sea. The archaeological sequence is analyzed within a chronological framework to explore patterns of human–environment interaction during the Early Holocene. The results suggest that the cultural transformations observed after the interruption during the Transitional Neolithic reflect adaptive strategies through which communities reorganized their subsistence systems and technological practices in response to environmental instability. These developments can be interpreted as forms of resilience and cultural niche construction that enabled human groups in the southeastern Caspian region to mitigate environmental stress and maintain long term occupation of the landscape.