Announcements

In academic literature, the various issues of power and hierarchy in ancient societies occupy a special place. In the middle of the II millennium BC, Kura-Araxes interfluve is represented by communities with various manifestations of power structures, i.e., early state formations along with the societies responsible for the creation of states in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Asia Minor, on the Iranian Plateau, and in the Balkan Peninsula. Many studies dedicated to social landscape, societal structure and early state formations, have been carried out with archaeological data collected in the aforementioned areas, although the archaeological and anthropological manifestations of privilege and hierarchy have not yet been the subject of a wider discussion.

The History Museum of Armenia and the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography NAS of Armenia organize an international conference with a subject of the research dedicated to various manifestations of privileges and hierarchy in complex societies.

A discussion on the issue in question as well as the participation of archaeologists, physical and cultural anthropologists, historians, specialists in comparative mythology and linguistics as well as representatives of other concomitant disciplines, will be a part of the respective conference.

CALL FOR PAPERS

16th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF YOUNG SCIENTISTS

ARCHAEOLOGY, ETHNOGRAPHY, FOLKLORISTICS:

INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES

National Academy of Sciences, RA

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography

16th International Conference of Young Scientists

20-22 November, 2019, Yerevan

Young Scientists Council of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography invites scholars, junior researchers and Ph.D. students (up to 40 years old) to take part in the 16th International Conference of Young Scientists. The conference is interdisciplinary, including

Archaeology
Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology
Folkloristics
The applicants are required to submit:

Abstracts in Armenian or English not more than 300 words, Word doc, Sylfaen font, composed of first and last names of the presenter, presentation title and 10 keywords. The abstract should contain brief content of research, main research problem as well as methodological and theoretical approaches.
Application form.
Deadline for abstracts submission is June 21, 2019 (late applications will not be accepted). Please, send application form and abstract at ysc@iae.am cc: ysc.iae.arm@gmail.com

The authors of the selected abstracts will be contacted via e-mail by July 26, 2019.

Draft version of papers (approx. 3000 words) submission deadline is October 25, 2019.

The languages of the conference are Armenian, English and Russian. Online presentations are also welcomed. Duration of the presentation will be 15 minutes.

Selected papers will be published as articles after being approved by the editorial board.

For international IAE will cover only accommodation costs.

For more information you can email at ysc.iae.arm@gmail.com

The Annual Conference is organized by YSC of IAE NAS RA.

Address: 15 Charents Str., 0025, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia.

Tel. (+374) 10 55 68 96, Email: info@iae.am

The 2nd international conference "Archaeology of Armenia in Regional Context" will be held in Yerevan from the 9th to the 11th of July 2019.

2019 marks the 60th anniversary of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, which we plan to commemorate with an international conference.

The primary goal of the conference is to showcase the results of the work of the Institute's archeological research groups over the past 10 years and the achievements of individual subdisciplines of archeology in Armenia.

Over the last 10 years, under the leadership or co-administration of the Institute, there have been approximately twenty archaeological expeditions, most of which are the result of international cooperation. These expeditions are typically at work simultaneously during the summer. As a result, specialists of different expeditions are rarely able to communicate with colleagues, share their work success and learn about the results of joint work as a result of scheduling issues, organizational challenges, and other reasons. Our intention is to bring together the members of archeological expeditions and provide an opportunity to communicate with one another. It is expected that specialists from the cooperating scientific and educational institutions of Armenia, USA, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Israel, Japan, Russia, Austria, Georgia and other countries will participate.

The Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of National Academy of Sciences of Armenia organizes the international conference “The Karabagh Movement: 30 Years Later (History, Reconsideration, and Lessons),” which will take place on September 10-12, 2018.

The policy of “Democratization, Perestroika, and Glasnost” proclaimed by the leaders of the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union in the mid 1980s was manifested by and gave birth to the national-democratic Karabagh Movement in Armenia a few years later, in 1988-1990. The result of this particular interpretation of the new Soviet tenets by Armenians could be defined as an “Armenian Revolution,” since it brought radical transformations in the political and socio-economic life of the society.

The Movement was inspired by the desire of people of the Nagorno (Mountainous) Karabagh Autonomous Region of the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, mostly populated with Armenians, to secede from the latter and to unite with the Soviet Republic of Armenia. The main justification put forth for this secession consisted in the perceived historical injustice relating to the decision made, under Stalin’s pressure, by the Caucasian Regional Committee of the Russian Communist Party in 1921, that refused the request by the Soviet Republic of Armenia to integrate Karabagh within its borders because of the overwhelming high percentage (96%) of the Armenian population in that region. In February 1988, mass rallies (that led to what was referred to as the “Karabagh Movement”: February 1988 – August 1990) began in Yerevan involving wide strata of Armenian society.

An examination of the Movement suggests that the Nagorno-Karabagh self-determination issue, initially proclaimed as the main political objective of the Movement, often served as a background that revealed many other problems of vital importance troubling Armenian society. Gradually, the Movement became both an instrument and a motivating force to search for solutions to these societal problems.

Karabagh Movement from the beginning to the end was directed from “below.” Therefore, from the very first days of its birth, the Movement was labeled as an obstacle for perestroika, and got punches of the Soviet leadership.

Its most important characteristics were peaceful, constitutional means and methods of the struggle adopted by the Movement from the very beginning. Since February 1988, main types of civil disobedience, protest and demands were peaceful non-violent rallies with different slogans but without any clashes with police, as well as sit-down strikes and hunger-strikes. Parliament elections of May-June 1990 were the peak of the effectiveness of constitutional struggle. As a result, non-communists were the majority in the parliament. On August 23, 1990 the “Declaration of Independence” was adopted and this was the beginning of an independent, democratic nation building.

Unlike Baltic states, where the movements from the very beginning were aimed at gaining independence, the anti-soviet moods in Armenia increased gradually. This is another indication that the Karabagh Movement was directed from “below.” During the Movement the process of re-assessment of the past and present has also started. This was manifested in realizing the value of people’s joint will, increased reliance on the possibility of independent action, shook the trust towards centuries of history perceiving Russians as saviors of Armenians, realization of the need to fight against Russian cultural assimilation and in other identity changes. So, the ideas conditioned with external and internal factors, conceived from the ground up, maturing gradually, step by step were gaining nation-wide coverage.

At the conference, the following issues are supposed to be discussed:

1. The Movement in Armenia and in Karabagh (e.g. the process of shaping, constituents, forms of representation, ecological movement, constitutional groups, etc.).

2. Participants/actors of the Movement (e.g. the Karabagh Committee, “minor” Karabagh Committees, Elders’ Council, “Krunk” Committee, Directors’ Council, visible and invisible figures).

3. The Movement in anthropological perspective, visual anthropology of the Movement, folklore, the Movement and collective memory of Armenian Genocide, etc.

4. The Movement in Yerevan, Stepanakert, and in the regions.

5. “… and next to it” (e.g. Kremlin/Gorbachev and the Karabagh Movement, Azerbaijani reflections to the Movement).

6. The Movement in the context of other democratic movements in the USSR and of the Eastern-European revolutions.

7. The Movement in fiction and arts (fiction, media, social and political journalism, diaries and memoirs, epistolary genre, poster art, photography, cinema, etc.).

8. The Movement and the collapse of the USSR: a consequence or regularity?

Deadline for presenting proposals is April 10, 2018. Proposals, including brief bio data, contact details (name, surname, affiliation, title), title of the paper and summary up to 300 words should be sent at hmarutyan@yahoo.com.

Authors of the proposals will be informed additionally until April 30, 2018. Priority will be given to analytical rather than descriptive proposals. Deadline for presenting papers is July 2, 2018. Papers presented at the conference and approved by the organizing committee will be published in the proceedings of the conference. For additional information address to the Institute of Archaeology & Ethnography, Academy of Sciences of Armenia (15 Charents St., 0025, Yerevan, Armenia), Harutyun Marutyan: e-mail hmarutyan@yahoo.com, tel. +374 10 55 67 97 (work), +374 91 65 86 76, +374 77 65 86 76 (cell).

The organizational committee of the conference will not cover travel expenses, but will help in accommodation for participants from abroad.

Diasporas are often understood and studied in relation to homelands, specific localities and exiled or migrant communities. ##

The main objective of this one day conference is to critically engage with the notion of diaspora as bounded place – with a particular agenda to unpack the diversity of its meanings for the people living in diasporic settings. As increasingly more migrant communities “demand” the diaspora title (and the number of diasporas proliferate), the conference will aim at discussing what the two terms “diaspora” and the “diasporic” share in common, and whether they constitute alternatives to each other. In doing so, however, the conference does not seek redefinitions. Instead, the papers engage with what the “diaspora does” at an everyday level by going beyond renaming “what it is.”

There will be two sessions in the conference. All papers will be presented in English. Each session will be followed by 30 mins discussion.

Session I on Armenian diaspora(s)

Session II on non-Armenian diasporic contexts.

The conference is organized by Aykut Ozturk in collaboration with the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of NAS RA, Hrant Dink Foundation and Gyumri Youth Initiative Centre within the the Turkey-Armenia Fellowship Scheme, which is implemented with the support of the UK Government's Conflict, Stability and Security Fund.

Dear colleagues,

We are happy to announce the call for papers for the academic conference “Funeral Rite from Ancient Times to Present (Armenian Highlands and South Caucasus)” organized by the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Yerevan, Armenia, on the 14th-16th May 2018.

Please prepare the title and the abstract of your presentation (maximum 2000 characters) and fill out the online application form before the 10th of April 2018.

We highly encourage presentations based on analytical studies; presentations containing only descriptive data will not be considered.

Selected authors will be invited to submit full articles to be included in the conference proceedings.

Fill out and submit the application form

Web-page of the conference

Organizational committee of the conference (Email: funeral-conf@iae.am)