WATERTOWN — On Friday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m., Vladimir Tshagharyan, director of Yerevan’s Shengavit Historical and Archaeological Culture Preserve, will present an illustrated talk about Shengavit at the Armenian Library and Museum of America (ALMA.)
Tshagharyan will visit at the invitation of the Cambridge Yerevan Sister City Association (CYSCA). Two years ago CYSCA, with the support of generous donors, established a project to help with the preservation and renovation of the Shengavit site.
Tshagharyan will be joined in discussion by Dr. Mitchell Rothman, an archaeologist from Pennsylvania and head of Widener University’s anthropology department. Rothman has spent three seasons excavating at Shengavit and plans to write a book on the subject.
Dr. Susan Pattie, anthropologist and director of ALMA, will moderate the discussion. Tshagharyan will speak in Armenian and his comments will be translated into English.
The site, across Yerevan Lake from the US Embassy, dates to the fourth millennium BCE and contains remains of dwellings, stone and metal implements, bones of domesticated animals and remnants of grains grown nearby.
The site also houses the tombs of Shengavit’s early inhabitants. It is believed that the area was occupied for more than 1,500 years.