Announcements

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)

Wed, 11/08/2017 - 10:00 to Fri, 11/10/2017 - 18:00##

CALL FOR PAPERS 15th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF YOUNG SCIENTISTS ARCHAEOLOGY, ETHNOGRAPHY, FOLKLORISTICS: INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES National Academy of Sciences, RA Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography 15th International Conference of Young Scientists 8-10 November, 2017, Yerevan.

Young Scientists Council of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography invites students and young scholars to take part in the 15th International Conference of Young Scientists.

The conference is interdisciplinary including

• Archaeology
• Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology
• Folkloristics

The applicants are required to submit:

1. Abstracts in Armenian or English not more than 300 words (Word doc, Sylfaen or Times New Roman font). The abstract should include the first and last names of the presenter, the presentation title and up to 10 key-words. The abstract should contain brief content of research, main research problem as well as methodological and theoretical approaches
2. Application form.

Deadline for the abstracts submissions is June 16, 2017. Please, the send application form and abstract to ysc@iae.am cc: ysc.iae.arm@gmail.com

The authors of the selected abstracts will be contacted via e-mail by July 16, 2017.

Draft version of papers (approx. 3000 words) submission deadline is October 25, 2017.

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 participants, the institute may cover the accommodation costs.
For more information email to 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

The Department of Diaspora Studies at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography NAS RA & The Armenian Diaspora Research Center at Haigazian University are Pleased to Invite You to Participate in the International Conference the Armenian Family in the Context of Contemporary Challenges 28-29 October 2017 Yerevan, Armenia.##

Conference Overview

Nowadays the family as a social institution has undergone fundamental changes that are having an impact on various aspects of the socal life. In this context, the changes taking place in the Armenian family are deeper because the conditions for existence of the representatives of Armenian nation are quite varied in different environments and generate a lot of challenges in reproduction of traditions and ethnicity. Historically, assuming the functions of other institutions, Armenian family acquired a key role in contributing to the preservation of national identity and ethno-cultural values.

In the context of current challenges, the International Conference on the contemporary issues of the Armenian family would give an opportunity: to gather new studies of the Armenian family within different disciplines; to identify trends and changes in the family both in homeland and Diaspora; to examine the role of the family in preserving ethnic identity; to compare traditional and modern models of the family and its functions.

Possible Topics

• Interdisciplinary approaches to the family study: research framework and issues, family models (traditional and modern)
• Methodology of the family study: implementing of methods and tools
• Family and ethnicity: concepts and problems
• Peculiarities of the family study in the own and foreign environment
• Root principals of the family issues in Armenia and in Diaspora:
• Interethnic and intra-ethnic marriages (between representatives of different communities in Diaspora and between representatives of homeland and of Diaspora)
• Family and ethno-cultural identity (intergenerational transmission, education, language, religion, etc.)
• Family and migration
• Family enterprise

Abstract Guidelines

The following criteria will be used to evaluate and select the submitted abstracts:

1. Subject: relevance to one of the mentioned above topics;
2. Language: Armenian (Western or Eastern), Russian or English;
3. Size: should not exceed 250 words;
4. Structure: brief introduction, research question, purpose, research objectives, theoretical framework and methodology to be applied in the paper.

Applicants should send e-mail (info.diasporastudies@gmail.com) presentation abstract and their short curriculum vitae (1 page) by June 30, 2017.

Participation

Researchers, scholars, and PhD students in social-humanitarian and historical sciences, representatives of NGO and policy makers from Armenia, Artsakh, and abroad are welcome to apply for the conference.

Participants will be selected based on paper abstract and CV. Selected participants will be invited to present their papers (20-minute time limit for presentations). Selected papers will be published after the conference.

Timeline

Abstract submission deadline: 30 June 2017
Reply by 20 July 2017
Pre-final version of selected paper. 20 September 2017
Conference program and agenda. 10 October 2017
Full paper submission deadline. 30 November 2017

Conference Languages

The conference will be conducted in Armenian. Simultaneous translation will be available during the presentations in English and Russian.

Fees and Costs

There is no participation fee and the conference participants will be provided with meals on the days of the conference. The participants are responsible for their travel and accommodation.

Organizing Committee and Editorial Board

The organizing committee of the conference is the group of researchers of the Department of Diaspora Studies at the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography NAS RA. Editorial board of the conference papers is the group of researchers of the Department of Diaspora Studies and the Armenian Diaspora Research Center at Haigazian University in Beirut.

The lecture will present some results of the joint Georgian-Italian archaeological project of Ca' Foscari University of Venice in collaboration with the Georgian National Museum in the Shida Kartli province of Georgia, focusing on their relevance for the integration of the pre-classical cultures of the Southern Caucasus into the general framework of Near Eastern archaeology. In particular, recent excavations at Aradetis Orgora, one of the main sites of the region, yielded a continuous occupational sequence able to highlight the development of local societies from the Early to the Middle and to the Late Bronze Age and, together with data from the neighbouring site of Khashuri Natsargora, contribute to the ongoing debate about the Kura-Araxes culture.

Elena Rova is associate professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Her research interests concentrate on the study of the first urban civilizations of the Near East, with a special focus on the archaeology of Upper Mesopotamia and its connections with the Southern Caucasus during the Late Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age (4th-2rd millennia BC). She has been doing field research in Northern Iraq (Tell Karrana 3) in Syria (Tell Leilan, Tell Beydar) and, since 2009, she is director of the "Georgian-Italian Shida Kartli Archaeological Project" of Ca' Foscari University of Venice in collaboration with the Georgian National Museum of Tbilisi (excavations of Natsargora, Okherakhevi and Aradetis Orgora). Among her main research topics are: the comparative chronology of the first urban civilizations, the interconnections between Mesopotamia and the neighbouring areas, the chronological and geographical distribution of ceramic styles, seals and iconographies (both with traditional methodologies, and with the help of mathematic-statistical analysis methods). She is the author (or co-author) of 6 monographs and of more than 100 articles and reviews in scientific journals, conference proceedings and miscellaneous volumes, and the editor (or co-editor) of 4 volumes of conference proceedings and miscellaneous studies.