By Yeranuhi Soghoyan
YEREVAN (Armenia Now) — The early Bronze Age monument at Kaps was discovered back in the 1980s during construction work on a reservoir some two kilometers from the village.
A settlement and burial field dating back to the Kur-Araks epoch was unearthed. No archeological studies were carried out at the site in the years that followed.
In 2008, Hamazasp Khachatryan, who heads archeological expeditions at the Gumri Geological Museum, and archeologist Larisa Yeganyan, collected some earthenware vessels at the site. Convinced that they belonged to an early Bronze Age culture they petitioned the RoA Monuments Preservation Agency to have the site protected.
This year, a joint expedition by the RoA National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archeology and the Gumri Geological Museum carried out a study of the site from July 2 to August 1. The expedition successfully unearthed one complete burial mound and discovered three graves with materials intact.
“One of the bodies discovered was that of a woman with a round bronze ring on her finger. The other two were males,” explains Larisa Yeganyan. “The woman lay in a normal prone position and the males were buried in a seated position. A sacrificial ceremony could have taken place there. Such rituals are characteristic of the period and it was also performed by Armenians.”
The archeologists were able to extract one complete clay vessel from the site. During the dig, a round stone cover for grain storage well was discovered as well as numerous shards of pottery.
