2005-RC-005

$3,200.00

Larisa Yeganyan

Vice Director, Shirak Regional Museum

This proposal seeks support for archeological excavations of a newly discovered Early Bronze Age site, Mets Sepasar, located in the Ghukasian region of the Shirak District in northern Armenia near the border of Georgia, which will help connect monuments of the same epoch in the lowlands of Mt. Aragats and Southern Georgia. Sepasar is uniquely situated to contribute to research on the Early Bronze Age in the Caucasus. Investigations at Sepasar offer the opportunity to extend our knowledge of the Early Bronze Age in Armenia further north, beyond the well-studied sites of Keti, and fill the geographic gap that currently exists in our knowledge of the Early Bronze Age between central Armenia and the well-know Early Bronze cultures of Georgia. Sepasar is important both for its location in an otherwise little known territory of the Kura Araxes horizon, and for its character is as settlement, rather than cemetery. The location of this site is particularly strategic, just above the Ashotsk valley at the headstream of the Akhurian River and on a transit route northward to the Black Sea.

It is anticipated that excavations at Sepasar will fill a substantial geographic gap in our knowledge of the Early Bronze Age. The area of southern Georgia's Early Bronze Age culture is well studied. In Armenia, the northernmost well-studied Early Bronze Age sites are those of Keti and Amasia. However, in between these regions of southern Georgia and Keti, little is known of the Early Bronze Age. Sepasar offers an opportunity to link these regions during a period that is purported to be marked by a single archaeological culture, known as Kura-Araxes.

A further anticipated benefit is the preservation of the monuments at Sepasar which, since 1980, have been threatened by a modern water basin construction project. The site does not fall under the protection of the Commission for the Protection of Monuments. It is anticipated that excavations will not only document and preserve the information yielded by the site, but will bring it to the attention of the government as an important heritage monument that requires attention if it is to be preserved.

September 30 - November 30, 2005