Ancient Tsikhia-Gora(Region of Shida Kartli )
Tsikhia-Gora (Georg. ციხია-გორას ნამოსახლარი) – fortified settlement, one of the first settlements of its kind in Transcaucasia. Judging by the period of ancient existence (IV-III centuries BC), the city of the Iberian kingdom. In another opinion, it was something like a temple community: a settlement around a large cult center. Roughly the same as the settlement of Vani. Judging by the archaeological layers, the city was inhabited in the Early Bronze and Late Bronze Age (from 3000 to 1000 years approximately), then everything disappeared for several centuries, and in the IV and III centuries a large structure appears on the hill, around which a city with a burial ground is formed. The cultural layer of this period is almost 5 meters.
Almost the entire hill was surrounded by a stone brick wall 1.5 meters thick, and this wall was plastered from the inside. In the center of the perimeter is a square temple enclosed by its own wall. There is a courtyard between the temple and its wall; there is a stone altar in the courtyard. All kinds of premises are attached to the temple. In one they found charred grains of barley, in the other a statue of a stone bull in the Persian style. The longest building contained a wine press and 20 earthenware jugs of qvevri, 8 kilometers from Tsikhea Gora there was another settlement, known as Samadlo.
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