You are warmly invited to our department research seminar: 

Tuesday 28 November, 4:15pm (GMT)

'Making Worlds in Mongol-era Armenia: Silk Routes and Local Networks'

Dr Kate Franklin (Birkbeck, University of London)

ABSTRACT: In this research seminar I will explore some of my in-process, interdisciplinary research into the cultural landscapes of the Armenian highlands in what has been called the ‘long Mongol thirteenth century.’ Drawing on my previous work on the local accommodation of Silk Road globality, I present some of the threads of research in the canyon region of Vayots Dzor, which during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was the demesne of Armenian Christian princes, proud and privileged vassals of the Ilkhanid Mongols. These threads of work draw on my ongoing archaeological fieldwork as co-PI of the Vayots Dzor Silk Road Survey, as well as historical and epigraphic evidence which inform my explorations of the layered making of medieval worlds in text, stone, soil, plant and animal life, and in the practices of memory and commemoration.