Eurasiatica

Quaderni di studi su Balcani, Anatolia, Iran, Caucaso e Asia Centrale

I višap armeni. Appunti per una storia della ricezione

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Abstract

Vishaps are large-scale prehistoric stelae decorated with animal reliefs, erected at secluded mountain locations of the South Caucasus. This paper focuses on the vishaps of modern Armenia and traces their history of re-use and manipulations, from the end of the third millennium BCE to the Middle Ages. Since their creation at an unknown point in time before 2100 BCE, vishaps functioned as symbolic anchors for the creation and transmission of religious and political messages: they were torn down, buried, re-worked, re-erected, transformed and used as a surface for graffiti. This complex sequence of re-contextualisations underscores the primacy of mountains as political arenas for the negotiation of religious and ritual meaning.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Presentato: 30 Giugno 2020 | Accettato: 20 Luglio 2020 | Pubblicato 21 Dicembre 2020 | Lingua: it

Keywords Monumentality • Armenian history • Medieval art • South Caucasus archaeology • Armenian prehistory • Bronze Age archaeology • Dragon-stones • Cross-stones • Megalithic art

Copyright © 2020 Alessandra Gilibert. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-469-1/007


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