Written accounts of the historical landscape of Vayots Dzor

Our central source is a universal history (account of the world from creation to the author’s time) composed at the end of the thirteenth century by a member of the Orbelyan family, Step’anos Orbelyan, the metropolitan bishop of Syunik. Orbelyan’s History of the Province of Sisakan (or The History of Syunik) provides information about the geography and built environment of Vayots Dzor (Orbelyan, Reference Orbelyan and Shahnazareants1859, Reference Orbelyan1986, Reference Orbelyan and Bedrosian2015). The author declares early in his account that he intends to tell the story of the princes of Syunik, in particular ‘their wars, their building activities, their times of peace, their admirable doings and building of houses of God which they erected in their own world as unerasable monuments and undying memorials’ (Orbelyan, Reference Orbelyan and Bedrosian2015: 87). The last century of professional archaeology in Vayots Dzor has relied heavily on the place names and descriptions of Orbelyan’s History, and their interpretations by the following scholars:

• - In 1842 and 1858, Archbishop Sargis Jalalyanc‘ published a two-volume account of travels through the lands of ‘Greater Armenia’, including the territory of Vayots Dzor-Daralagyaz (Jalalyanc‘, Reference Jalalyanc‘2016).

• - Later that century, the provincial doctor Gabriel Ter-Hovhannisyan, known as Kajberuni, travelled extensively and provided detailed descriptions of the topography, monuments, and ethnographic customs of Vayots Dzor. Initially published in various periodicals which circulated across the Armenian diaspora, his writings were compiled and released in his Travel Observations in 1890 (Kajberuni, Reference Kajberuni2003).

• - During the late years of the Russian Empire, a mission of the Moscow Archaeological Society produced a series of reports, Materials for the Archaeology of the Caucasus (known as MAC; Uvarova & Kuchuk-Ioannesov, Reference Uvarova and Kuchuk-Ioannesov1916). These reports contain photographs and plans of places that had disappeared by the mid-twentieth century.

• - During the same period, the ethnographer Yervand Lalayan published extensively on the landscapes and human geography of the South Caucasus in the Armenian-language journal Ethnographic Review (Lalayan, Reference Lalayan1904, Reference Lalayan1916, Reference Lalayan2021).

• - The archaeologist and historian Hovsep Yeghiazaryan, representative of the Soviet Antiquities Preservation Committee, carried out fieldwork in Vayots Dzor, resulting in his Cultural Monuments of the Azizbekov Region (Yeghiazaryan, Reference Yeghiazaryan1955). This text summarizes the recorded historical landscape of Vayots Dzor for a general audience, serving as a guidebook in step with the development of internal tourism.

• - In the 1960s, the first of the still-expanding series of the Corpus of Armenian Inscriptions (Divan Hay Vimagrutyan, henceforth DHV) was published. The 1967 volume on Vayots Dzor (Barkhudaryan, Reference Barkhudaryan1967) draws on all the work discussed above as well as sources used to compile it, such as the geography of Ghevond Alishan (Alishan, Reference Alishan1893).

In our efforts to locate and preserve the medieval places described in Orbelyan’s History, we share the project of these travellers and scholars. The study of medieval landscapes in Vayots Dzor has been marked by technological change, of which the first printing of Orbelyan’s text in 1859 (hence making it a portable reference) is as significant an example as the recent application of remote-sensing survey techniques. But, as we show here, our methodology has moved from identifying place names and descriptions across various accounts to analysing the ways that each of these texts builds on those which came before. In some cases, this textual layering has preserved records of now-destroyed sites, objects, or inscriptions. In other cases, hypotheses put forward by an earlier writer became solidified into ‘facts’ over decades of citation. A further major result is that the Monuments List, which effectively flattened the 150-plus years covered by these texts into a palimpsest of traces and erasures, can now be recontextualized and in some cases corrected by the VDSRS and other work by our colleagues.

Karkop

The monastic site of Karkop (also called Khotakerac’) (Supplementary Material no. 236 and Figure 1: Point 128) is located at the south-western edge of Vayots Dzor, overlooking the Sharur Plain. Jalalyanc‘ reports that ‘this monastery was built in the year 385 [ad 937] by Prince Smbat and his wife Sophia, in the time of Bishop Hakob of Syunik. And here assembled vegetarian (xotačarak) hermits’ (Jalalyanc‘, Reference Jalalyanc‘2016: 361). The author enumerates the inscriptions on the building relating how it was rebuilt following a tenth-century earthquake: critically, he transcribes Step’anos Orbelyan’s account of those inscriptions as they appear in his History (Orbelyan, Reference Orbelyan and Shahnazareants1859: 281–82, Reference Orbelyan and Bedrosian2015: 125). As Kajberuni notes a few decades later, ‘[Jalalyanc‘] took the text not from the walls of Karkop, but from the history’ (Kajberuni, Reference Kajberuni2003: 307). So, the perspective of an eyewitness account of this site shifts to the ‘eyes’ of the medieval writer. Jalalyanc‘ augments this with the fragmentary inscription that encircled the building and was carved at the top of the exterior walls, recording the donation of Smbat Orbelyan (in the thirteenth century) in the name of himself, his brother Tarsayič‛, his mother Asp‘a, and his wife ‘Uk‘an’ (Jalalyanc‘, Reference Jalalyanc‘2016: 364; Barkhudaryan, Reference Barkhudaryan1967: 206). Rare in Vayots Dzor, encircling inscriptions like this have been argued to have played a role in liturgical processions, tying buildings in with the seasons of the canonical year and linking them with their surrounding sacralized landscape (Maranci, Reference Maranci, Yalman and Ugurlu2019).

Kajberuni notes the different Armenian (Karkop) and Turkish (Kaladash) names for the site, and remarks on its ruined state and the nature of its construction. He observes that the fine yellow stone used in details including the dedicatory inscription matches stonework at Arpa (medieval Areni, Supplementary Material no. 37), suggesting a link between the site and other Orbelyan constructions. Repeating the contents of the long inscription by Smbat Orbelyan, Kajberuni corrects Jalalyanc‘’s reading of the name of Smbat’s wife (Ruzuk‘an, not Uk‘an). He describes these inscriptions as ‘broken from the falling and loss of stones and worn from rain and wind’ and provides his own reading of the repaired inscription, noting where he uses Orbelyan’s words to plug the holes in the ‘worn and lost text’ (Kajberuni, Reference Kajberuni2003: 307). This is a remarkable piece of nineteenth-century epigraphic archaeology.

In recent decades, a local person independently took the initiative to ‘restore’ the church at Karkop, which resulted in the dismantling of the standing ruin and further damage to the integrity of the structure. While the buildings of the monastery remain buried, the ongoing physical degradation of this monument means that our link between the archaeological site and the medieval place are increasingly dependent on the textual record.

Selimberd, or Sulema’s Fortress

The ‘impregnable fortress of Sulema’ (Supplementary Material no. 172 and Figures 1 and 2: 93) has a special importance within Orbelyan’s History, connected to the narrative of the conversion period and the related ‘conversion’ of the landscape of the Armenian highlands through the transport and commemoration of relics. Orbelyan links the fortress with the relics of St Mamas (or Mammes) of Caesarea. In a widespread medieval practice of converting and claiming landscape through the consecration of relics, the St Mamas relics were brought by the princes of Syunik in the fourth century from Caesarea on the backs of mules; the latter refused to walk further than the spot where the relics would eventually be housed ‘within the borders of the impregnable fortress of Sulema’, which Orbelyan further identifies as ‘a level spot in the Sulema valley, called Dezpanart’ (Orbelyan, Reference Orbelyan and Bedrosian2015: 138–39). We thus see a medieval example of rooting history in places, attested severally in Vayots Dzor.

Moving up the canyon of the river Selim, Kajberuni provides us with a first observation of a ruined settlement on the slopes and crown of the cliffs to the east of the river. Describing the visible rooms and remains of walls, he concludes: ‘This is the fortress built by Sulema, which is recorded in the history of Orbelyan. It is so protected and encircled by nature, that no technological method was needed for the slaughtering of enemies, especially in the time of this fortress’s activity, when men were destroyed with bow and arrow, and not with Krupp guns’ (Kajberuni, Reference Kajberuni2003: 136). It is fascinating to see Kajberuni’s reflections on his own too-modern times incorporated into his reading of the medieval landscape, especially his romantically imagined relationships between the nature of Vayots Dzor and its medieval inhabitants. Having reached the Selim pass at the head of the canyon, Kajberuni included a moving description of the perceived landscape from the crest of the pass, juxtaposing his reflections on the historical power of the Orbelyans with the timeless power of the natural landscape on the emotions of the viewer.

In his description of the Selim gorge, Lalayan merely repeats the attribution of the place name to ‘Lord (tanuter) Sulema’ and the reference to Orbelyan (Lalayan, Reference Lalayan1904: 278). By the mid-1950s, the identification of this fortress as ’Sulema berd’ (‘Sulema’s fortress’) is unquestioned and bolstered by the fact that it is ‘noted in manuscripts to have existed from the fourth-fifth centuries’ (Yeghiazaryan, Reference Yeghiazaryan1955: 75). In this note, Yeghiazaryan combines Orbelyan’s link with fourth-century events and Kajberuni’s identification of this site with Orbelyan’s narrative, compounding this connection by further noting, without reference, that the neighbouring village ‘was called Dezpanart in the fourth century’ (Yeghiazaryan, Reference Yeghiazaryan1955: 75). The dating of the fortress to the fourth century is ultimately codified on the Monuments List entry for the fortress. This chain of inferences only becomes visible by tracing the links between these travellers and their accounts. The VDSRS surveys recovered ceramics from the settlement on its slope (Figure 5), which are contemporary with the thirteenth–fourteenth-century assemblages from our excavations at Arpa (Babajanyan & Franklin, Reference Babajanyan and Franklin2018). Like many settlements dated by the List on the basis of Orbelyan’s History, any earlier dating must await excavations and material corroboration.

Figure 5.

The slopes of the Selimberd settlement, with a medieval carved stone cross (khachkar) in the foreground.

The Boloraberd complex

The observations of our travellers also demonstrate the complex ways that different groups live within the medieval landscape, and the ways that medieval ruins, fragments, and objects are made meaningful through time. This includes not only the ‘proper’ recording and conservation of sites, but also various popular practices of commemoration, and the transformation of architectural ruins into dispersed art objects and relics.

The Boloraberd complex consists of Spitakavor monastery (also called St Karapet hermitage; Supplementary Material no. 910 and Figures 1 and 2: point 50) and Boloraberd-Proshaberd fortress (Supplementary Material no. 90 and Figures 1 and 2: point 49). Spitakavor monastery is located on a plateau on the south-facing slope of the Teksar mountain range, between two ravines (Figure 6). The fortress is located 1 km to the east, on a conical rocky hill in a dominant position looking southwards over the canyons (Figure 7). The fortress was given its popular name, Proshaberd, because it lies in the historical land of Sarkołovk’ (Srkłonk’) mentioned by Step’anos Orbelyan as part of the hereditary lands of the Proshyan princely family (Orbelyan, Reference Orbelyan and Bedrosian2015: 260; see also Hovsepyan, Reference Hovsepyan1928: 204).

Figure 6.

The Spitakavor monastery.

Figure 7.

The Boloraberd-Proshaberd fortress from the north-east.

Image available at https://ama100.am/am/monuments/regions/Vayots-Dzor-Province/Պռոշաբերդ.

Jalalyanc‘ describes the monastic complex and environs and notes that, because of the rose trees growing in the surroundings of the monastery, the tačiks (the Turkish-speaking population) called the monastery Gyul-vank or ‘rose monastery’ (Jalalyanc‘, Reference Jalalyanc‘2016: 346). He admires the monastery’s sculptures that depict both religious and secular scenes. The latter include a portrait of the founders of the monastery, Prince Eachi Proshyan, described as ‘a majestic and venerable old man stately seated’, and his ‘lovely’ son Amir Hassan II (Uvarova & Kuchuk-Ioannesov Reference Uvarova and Kuchuk-Ioannesov1916: 123; Jalalyanc‘, Reference Jalalyanc‘2016: 345). Decades later, Kajberuni found that sculptures described by Jalalyanc’ as belonging to the northern wall had fallen and been moved inside the church. During twentieth-century explorations at this monastery, numerous fragments of architectural decoration were removed and transferred to museums. While compiling the corpus of epigraphs for the DHV in 1939, Barkhudaryan found the portrait of Eachi and Amir Hassan fallen and arranged for transport of it and other fragments to the History Museum of Armenia (Barkhudaryan, Reference Barkhudaryan1967: 94). By 1940 the Proshyan portrait had been registered in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, where it formed part of an exemplary collection of medieval art. One fragment from Spitakavor, a depiction of the Apostle Peter, remains in the Yeghegnadzor Regional Museum. These sculptures resemble those of the church of Noravank, built by Burtel Orbelyan in the fourteenth century, and are attributed to the school of the sculptor and architect Momik (Hasratyan, Reference Hasratyan1984; Matevosyan, Reference Matevosyan2017: 61–63).

Walking through the ruins to the south of the church at Spitakavor, Kajberuni remarked on a fourteenth-century khachkar (carved stone cross; see Figure 5 for an example at Selimberd), upon which he stood, and relates a story told by his guide. A few years earlier, a Russian policeman had removed the stone with the intent to take it to his house, but he suddenly lost his wits before reaching home. The man was only cured with the return of the khachkar (Kajberuni, Reference Kajberuni2003: 252). This account of the stone’s imagined agency, and Kajberuni’s broader attention to the accounts of villagers living with medieval remains, and especially khachkars, resonates with both medieval and ongoing discussions about the diverse ways monuments are given meaning through practice. As the art historian Abraham Shahinyan observed, medieval popular customs around khachkars frequently bore little to no relationship to the original intent or content of the carved monuments, mirrored in the diverse traditions attached to khachkars in Vayots Dzor and other regions in the twentieth century (Shahinyan, Reference Shahinyan1984: 62–63). Many such practices are evidenced in the robust tradition of shrine (matur) construction in Vayots Dzor, which was recorded by the VDSRS across the survey area (Babajanyan & Franklin, Reference Babajanyan, Franklin, Avetisyan and Bobokhyan2021: 408). These shrines make use of fragments of khachkars and/or architecture, attesting to intimate and informal veneration, including the lighting of candles and offering of sacrifice (matał). The sites of Boloraberd provide a useful example of the diverse ways that medieval sites are fragmented, moved, reconstructed, and made meaningful.

Tanahat or Gladzor

Located in the centre of the VDSRS survey area north of Yeghegnadzor (Supplementary Material no. 100 and Figure 1: point 55), is a monastic site consisting of a renovated church and the remains of the walls of a monastic establishment and settlement (Figure 8). This monastery has been given multiple names (Tanahat, Tanat, Gharavank, Gladzor) as successive generations of scholars debate its identity; the outcome of these debates has interesting implications for the history of Vayots Dzor as a place, as each version links this hilly landscape to different political and historical narratives.

Figure 8.

The Tanahat monastery.

Image available at https://ama100.am/am/monuments/regions/Vayots-Dzor-Province/Tanahat-monaster.

The original narrative comes from Orbelyan, who linked one of two stories about monasteries called Tanahat—both with churches dedicated to the eighth-century martyred bishop Step’anos—to the region of Vayots Dzor (Orbelyan, Reference Orbelyan and Bedrosian2015: 75). Jalalyancʽ’s discussion of the site of Tanahat begins with and centres on Orbelyan’s account, which he uses to conclude that the ruins located north of Yeghegnadzor are the ‘tomb of Step’anos of Syunik’, a version corroborated by the ‘traditions of the inhabitants’ (Jalalyancʽ, Reference Jalalyanc‘2016: 398–99). The account continues with a description of the inscriptions of St Step’anos’ church, which Jalalyancʽ recorded as he walked around and inside the building. Among these recorded inscriptions, most name only the church, but Jalalyanc‘ notes one or two that identify the monastery as ‘Tanad’ (Jalalyanc‘, Reference Jalalyanc‘2016: 400, 401), including the dedicatory inscription by T’ačer in the tympanum above the entrance. These inscriptions are confirmed and the name corrected to ‘Tanat’ by the DHV (Barkhudaryan, Reference Barkhudaryan1967: 82, no. 224, 76, no. 209).

Kajberuni reached Tanahat on a day exploring sites around Bashkend (Vernashen) and after ascending the Boloraberd-Proshaberd fortress (see above). He observes that the architecture at this site is entirely built of black stone, which explains the name (Gharavank) given by the local Turkish speakers and their Armenian neighbours. He notes the state of the site, including that the ruins of the gavit (narthex) of the church were being used as a threshing floor (Kajberuni, Reference Kajberuni2003: 258). In considering the history of the site, he juxtaposes the marvellous account provided by Orbelyan with the history of construction and patronage he himself can reconstruct from the inscriptions on walls and gravestones. A significant part of Kajberuni’s text is then dedicated to correcting Jalalyanc‘’s earlier account of the inscriptions at the site, including page-by-page corrections of the wordings recorded by that traveller (Kajberuni, Reference Kajberuni2003: 264).

Writing in 1904, Lalayan notes the change in names between what he understands from Orbelyan and the place names noted by the Turkish population living around Malishka at the turn of the twentieth century. He makes a brief observation connected with the village then called Ortakend, that ‘to the north-east up the canyon is the thirteenth-to-fourteenth-century renowned Gayladzor or Gladzor monastery (menastan), which is now called Gharavank’ (Lalayan, Reference Lalayan1904: 271). Lalayan is thus the first to make the connection between the site called Gharavank by local people and Tanahat by historians with the historical Armenian centre of Gladzor.

The existence of a monastery or university (hamalsaran) known as Gladzor is reported in textual sources on artistic and scholarly life including numerous manuscript colophons. These sources are commemorative inscriptions added to manuscripts by their curators, copyists, and/or owners. Several colophons mention being written at a place called Gladzor, including those written in the so-called Gladzor Gospel (UCLA Armenian MS 1; Mathews & Sanjian, Reference Mathews and Sanjian1991). In a colophon dated 1377, the lady Vaxax, granddaughter of Tarsayič‛ Orbelyan, records her ownership of the book (Matthews & Sanjian, Reference Mathews and Sanjian1991: 190), attesting further to the links between place and political culture in medieval Syunik. The possibility of a centre of artistic and literary production at Gladzor being definitively located is thus a key question in the rooting of Armenian medieval cultural history within physical landscapes and the built heritage.

In 1956, Avetisyan argued for identifying Tanahat with the medieval university of Gladzor, linking his reconstructed history of Gladzor University to the connection made by Lalayan (Avetisyan, Reference Avetisyan1956: 85). This is bolstered by references in a series of colophons, which Avetisyan argued link the name Tanahat to Gladzor through a third medieval name for the place, Aghbercʽ Vank (Matevosyan, Reference Matevosyan1984: 552, 663). However, the DHV disregarded the connection as merely a guess, noting Lalayan’s lack of supporting evidence (Barkhudaryan, Reference Barkhudaryan1967: 72). In their own discussion of the site, the editors of the DHV stress the non-overlap of epigraphic references to Tanahat at the site and the references to Gladzor in the colophons of manuscripts.

In 1969–70, excavations at the site of Tanahat, led by Igit Gharibyan, cleared the foundations of multiple buildings, including three churches, and added nearly fifty inscription fragments to the corpus from the site. The published ceramics from the excavations—which include sgraffito splash ware bowls, underglaze-painted fritwares, stamped tablewares, and plain red-slipped redwares (Gharibyan, Reference Gharibyan1983: 81–100)—suggest a thirteenth–fifteenth century date for the site when compared with assemblages from elsewhere in Vayots Dzor. On the basis of excavated grave markers bearing the names of medieval writers, artists, and teachers (Gharibyan, Reference Gharibyan1983: 149–50), the excavators confidently identify Tanahat with Gladzor.

The results of the excavations and the ‘settling’ of the debate had ramifications in local and national relationships with the site and its surrounding landscape. In October 1984, the Armenian Soviet government sponsored the celebration of the 700^th anniversary of the founding of Gladzor University. This celebration was held at the site of Tanahat, accompanied by a folk-life festival attended by hundreds of thousands of people, including Soviet officials. Commemorative events were also held in the purpose-built Momik Park in the town of Yeghegnadzor. For this event, the site of Tanahat itself was conserved, the church buildings were reconstructed, and a museum of the monastery and monastic life was created on the road between the town and the monastery. These events and place-makings cemented the site’s identity within local memory and in national discourse.

The Yeghegis settlement

Like many archaeological surveys, the VDSRS is marked by lacunae, exemplified by major medieval sites that continued to be occupied and then covered by villages inhabited today. This presents challenges, as our material (such as the assemblages housed in the Yeghegnadzor Regional Museum) depends on chance finds by villagers, but also gives opportunities to gain insights into the emergence and development of ideas of material history and national identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as evidenced by our travel accounts. An excellent example of this is the settlement of Yeghegis, on the north-eastern branch of the tributary of the same name (Supplementary Material nos. 130–41 and Figures 1 and 2). The region around the town of Yeghegis-Alayaz contains dense artefactual, architectural, and epigraphic remains, making up part of the ‘Armenian artistic pantheon’ associated with the Orbelyans and the artists under their patronage (Tamanyan, Reference Tamanyan1974: 43).

Upon arriving at Yeghegis from the south-west, Jalalyanc‘ paused his narrative to remark at length on the profound, wild beauty of the canyon, and the benevolent bounty of the landscape watered by sparkling streams. This natural beauty provides the context for the settlement itself, specifically the ‘entirely wonderful and lamentable ruins, among which are magnificent stone-built churches of sublime, solid architecture’ (Jalalyanc‘, Reference Jalalyanc‘2016: 347). Jalalyanc‘ deploys the Romantic juxtaposition of sublime ruins and nature to frame a critique of the inhabitants of his day, who are ‘others’: the town is tačkabnak, occupied by Muslims. The traveller continues his description, decrying how ‘the ruins of the exquisite palaces and houses of our princes are now the homes of owls and the dens of beasts’ (Jalalyanc‘, Reference Jalalyanc‘2016: 347). This critique, influenced by medieval tropes of lamentation crafted by Orbelyan and others, is picked up decades later by Kajberuni, who remarks on how the present-day village was built on the medieval ruins, with the villagers keeping their animals within the walls of the monastic sites and pulling the ashlars from the walls to build their houses and line the floors of their barns (Kajberuni, Reference Kajberuni2003: 220). We can thus see a tension already in the nineteenth century between the lifeways of living people, and a concern to preserve the landscape associated with a valued past, a tension also exacerbated by the perceived ethnic differences between the villagers on the one hand, and the travellers and their medieval ancestors on the other.

Layered within these travel accounts, information emerges about a major piece of now lost medieval monumental art. This piece (Figure 9), said to have lain in the scattered ruins between the medieval churches of Yeghegis, is a semicircular stone fragment similar in proportions to a tympanum inset and carved with inscriptions—‘A blessing upon the portal of Tarsayič‛ and his wife Mina Khatun, in the year of the Armenians 743 (1274)’ (Jalalyanc‘ Reference Jalalyanc‘2016: 350)—that surround a rare portrait of a medieval Armenian prince and even rarer depiction of a princess, namely Tarsayič‛ Orbelyan and his wife Mina Khatun of the house of Hasan Jalal Dola (and so one of Jalalyanc‘’s ancestors). Kajberuni (Reference Kajberuni2003: 222) reported that he buried the stone to preserve it. Using that information, Lalayan began his search for the object with excavations, but ultimately located the fragments within a village house wall, and promptly photographed it (Lalayan, Reference Lalayan1916: 68–69). This photograph (Figure 9) is now the only visual record of this remarkable piece of thirteenth-century art, which by the time of the DHV was reported as lost (Barkhudaryan, Reference Barkhudaryan1967: 115–16).

Figure 9.

Portrait of Tarsayič‛ Orbelyan and Mina Khatun.

Reproduced by permission of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Yerevan (Lalayan, Reference Lalayan2021: fig. 29).

The history of Yeghegis as a site of medieval memory is entwined, like Tanahat, in the wider history of Soviet Armenian nation-making in the later twentieth century. Original surveys in Yeghegis were carried out in 1957, and the buildings were reconstructed using local basalt, beginning with Zorats church in 1971–72 (Tamanyan, Reference Tamanyan1974: 46), followed by the nearby St Karapet (St Nshan) in 1976; the intent and result of this work was to enhance Yeghegis as a ‘little open-air museum’ where a visitor might encounter fragments of Armenia’s medieval history at every step (Tamanyan, Reference Tamanyan1977: 40). The 1970s and 1980s also mark a period of Turkish emigration from Vayots Dzor, as evidenced by local memory and dates on markers in Muslim cemeteries recorded by the VDSRS. Over recent decades, Yeghegis has continued to be investigated by interdisciplinary and collaborative researchers (Amit & Stone, Reference Amit and Stone2002; Melkonyan & Hakobyan, Reference Melkonyan and Hakobyan2016). A secondary effect of these excavations and clearings is the erasure of the Muslim occupation encountered by Jalalyanc‘ and Kajberuni, and the creation of a picturesque medieval Armenian village with a cosmopolitan past.

Shativank

Our final example is the monastic site of Shativank, or Shatini Vank, located within a depression in the mountains to the east of Shatin village (Supplementary Material no. 155 and Figures 1 and 2: point 82). This small monastery, an excellent example of the medieval Armenian ‘hermitage in the world’, is only a few kilometres from the villages on either side but is invisible from the valleys, and before the twentieth century was accessed by a winding, steep path up a narrow canyon. In addition to documenting the complex dating of sites from mentions in Orbelyan’s History, the layered textual discourse attached to this site illustrates a long tradition in Armenia of constructing ideas of heritage from ‘natural’ as well as ‘cultural’ sites, blending the distinction between the two.

The complex comprises the central St Sion church, a three-nave basilica constructed in 1655 by the merchant Hakob Jułayec’i, with an attached vaulted open gavit or narthex to the west, as well as residential and auxiliary structures and a tower-shaped granary. The site is enclosed by a rectangular defensive wall, fortified with semicircular towers along its southern façade. The main gate is in the middle of the western defensive wall, with a secondary entrance in the eastern wall. Two-storey vaulted buildings run along the entire length of the southern enclosure wall, housing cells for congregants on the upper floor and refectories and other structures on the ground floor.

The site is a temporal outlier in our discussion; the foundation inscription on St Sion church dates that building to ad 1655 (Barkhudaryan, Reference Barkhudaryan1967: 160). However, the monastery is dated by Barkhudaryan and others to the tenth century, based on a passage in Step’anos Orbelyan that describes the founding of a hermitage (anapat) by Hakob, bishop of Syunik under the reign of Smbat Bagratuni (Barkhudaryan, Reference Barkhudaryan1967: 155). According to this account, the bishop was struck by the remoteness and natural beauty of the location and built a church of dressed stone decorated in multicoloured paintings; furthermore, Smbat and his brother Sahak endowed ‘all the mountainside extending down to the river with its many gardens and fields’ (Orbelyan, Reference Orbelyan and Shahnazareants1859: 304, Reference Orbelyan and Bedrosian2015: 135). Orbelyan relates that the founding of this monastery ‘in the valley of Ełegyac’ above the village of Vostin’ (Orbelyan, Reference Orbelyan and Bedrosian2015: 135) took place in the year 378/ad 929.

Jalalyanc‘s description of Shativank is matter-of fact, laying out the dimensions of the buildings in paces, and noting the visible inscriptions (Jalalyanc‘, Reference Jalalyanc‘2016: 346–47). Kajberuni’s account of Shativank is much fuller and remarkable for its awareness of the landscape around the site. Walking up the steep path from the river valley below, Kajberuni describes relict gardens and orchards on the mountain path to Shativank. He notes to either side ‘the re-wilded (vayrenac‘ac) gardens of this forest, which once belonged to Shatini Vank, and were cultivated and cared for by the hands of that now-extinct monastery’ (Kajberuni, Reference Kajberuni2003: 199). His musings on these former gardens frame them as a kind of ‘ecological ruin’ resonant with present-day conversations on natural-cultural heritage, as he reflects that such plantings are all that remain of people who left ‘no history, monument, name or tradition’ and that have become instead the habitat of bears, partridges, and other wild things (Kajberuni, Reference Kajberuni2003:199; DeSilvey, Reference DeSilvey2017; Bangstad & Pétursdóttir, Reference Bangstad and Pétursdóttir2022). Kajberuni expresses frustration at being unable to locate evidence for the tenth-century founding of the site; all the epigraphic evidence dates to the seventeenth century or later. The 1916 reports of the Russian expeditions to Vayots Dzor describe a visit to Shativank. The expedition recorded several inscriptions as well as the plan of the church, noting that the monastery was entirely abandoned, except for a single elderly monk keeping bees among the ruins (Uvarova & Kuchuk-Ioannesov, Reference Uvarova and Kuchuk-Ioannesov1916: 83).

The historical visitors to the site of Shativank have in common an interest in the well-preserved water mill within the site, which was powered by a stream that had changed its course towards the south since the early modern period (Kajberuni, Reference Kajberuni2003: 204). The remains of this mill and possible relict fields bring us back to the cultural duality of the hermitage in medieval and early modern Armenia. While apparently isolated in its bowl-shaped valley, Shativank was connected to the world through agriculture and by hydrological as well as travel infrastructure. A prime example of the latter is the stone-built Tsaturi bridge, over the Yeghegis river to the south-west of the site (Supplementary Material no. 165 and Figure 1: point 89). The ruins of its western end and a partial arch of this monument were located by the VDSRS in 2015. Tsaturi bridge was constructed in 1666, according to an inscription recorded by Kajberuni; this inscription (now lost) records its building by Sargis vardapet, in the name of Hakob the patriarch and the Persian Shah Suleyman (Barkhudaryan, Reference Barkhudaryan1967: 163; Kajberuni, Reference Kajberuni2003: 205).

In 1985, excavations were undertaken at the monastic complex with the primary objective of clearing the site of debris (Mkrtchyan, Reference Mkrtchyan1985), bringing to light partially visible structures that had collapsed. The recovered assemblage, currently housed in the Yeghegnadzor Regional Museum, predominantly consists of ceramics dating to the thirteenth–eighteenth centuries. In 2020–21, as part of the ‘Conservation, Partial Restoration, and Area Improvement of the Shativank Monastery’ project, partial excavations were conducted within the complex by Babajanyan and Azatyan. The arched hall of the main gate was revealed, and the space between the narthex and the western wall was cleared from north to south, exposing building façades that extended from east to west (Figure 10). The materials recovered provide insights into the continuous occupation of the complex between the thirteenth and the eighteenth centuries, in two distinct phases: a) late thirteenth century to the end of the fourteenth century and b) seventeenth–eighteenth centuries. The assemblage predominantly comprises ceramic building material, including roof tiles and water pipes, alongside household items such as storage jars, tableware, and oil lamps. A small collection of liturgical vessels, including candlesticks and fragments of book bindings dating to the seventeenth–eighteenth centuries, was also recovered.

Figure 10.

Excavated area at Shativank.

Epigraphic research demonstrated that Shativank underwent various interventions since Barkhudaryan’s visit in the 1950s–60s, including instances of collapse and excavations. During this period, the recorded number of inscriptions has fluctuated: Barkhudaryan initially documented thirty-three inscriptions (Barkhudaryan, Reference Barkhudaryan1967: 156–61, ins. nos. 463–86), including those deciphered by Kajberuni that were not preserved by his time. The excavations in 1985 and 2020–21 yielded fourteen new inscriptions, found on the lower rows of the walls of St Sion. However, certain inscriptions deciphered by Barkhudaryan are now known to be ‘lost’ beneath new collapse events. It is critical to note that this extensive archaeological research produced no evidence to support the tenth-century foundation date based on Orbelyan’s account. More research is thus required to justify the date of ad 929 given for the site on the Monuments List.