During the 2005 and 2006 Project ArAGATS field seasons, Lori Khatchadourian conducted excavations at the mid-first millennium BC settlement of Tsaghkahovit. The investigations, described in the most recent project report (link), have focused upon a rectilinear complex that appears to have been a locus of authority on the Tsaghkahovit plain from roughly 600 to 300 BC, when Armenia existed as a satrapy, or province, of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.
This field research is part of Khatchadourians dissertation project examining the politics and society of southwest Asia during the second half of the first millennium BC. Khatchadourian examines the existing historical paradigm that has come to dominate the study of west Asia in these centuries, and particularly the privileged position that dynasty, empire, and culture have long held over historical and archaeological inquiry. This research probes the origins of the traditional historical paradigm and theorizes its consequences for an understanding of political and social life. Khatchadourian considers how alternative approaches focused on materiality and informed by relevant discourses in history and anthropology can enhance such an understanding.
The project moves across different scales, from the town of Tsaghkahovit, to the wider region within which this town was located, to the dynasty which governed it, and finally to the empire to which this dynastic satrapy paid tribute. Through the case study of the Armenian highland, this dissertation aims to offer a new approach to the study of socio-politics in west Asiaone which recognizes the importance of local material interactions for understanding the organization of complex societies.