An Evolving Defensive Landscape: The Vedi River Valley and the Vedi Fortress through a Diachronic Perspective

Abstract

<p>The Vedi River Valley of Armenia provides an important mobility link between the broad and fertile Ararat Plain with the resource-rich mountain ranges to the east. Hemmed in by mountains to the north and south, this valley has an elongated east-west shape with limited points of access at each end. This forms a contained area with a wide variety of ecozones available for human subsistence. As a result of this position and landscape, throughout the past several millennia, groups of people have invested in the valley’s defense by constructing massive fortifications throughout the valley. Prime among these is the Vedi Fortress, which guards the valley’s entrance from the Ararat Plain. However, there are also many other elevated sites along the foothills above the Vedi River and its tributaries, which were also fortified with large stone walls. Of particular importance is that these sites are often reused across multiple times by different occupants from each period. Thus, by applying a diachronic perspective, we can understand how different people thought about the same spatial configurations available in this valley. The ways past groups both reused the same sites and fortifications through time, or ignored old locations and chose new ones, provide some interesting views into the differences among the periods. This paper presents results from fieldwork in the Vedi River Valley since 2022 by the Ararat Plain Southeast Archaeological Project (APSAP), a collaboration between the University of Hong Kong and the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences, Republic of Armenia. Our fieldwork is beginning to map past diachronic human activity throughout this valley. Among our research goals, we are investigating how this same unique landscape was used differently across time, including for defense and fortification. We will share results of our analysis of the landscape’s use and reuse and how this helps us to conceptualize past thinking about fortresses and defense systems in the wider region. </p>