For almost four centuries, the Parthians served as the rulers of the Armenian kingdom, even after their own kingdom had fallen to the Sasanians in 223 CE. Yet, as far as the documents from this period attest, it was not Parthian, the language of the ruling class, but Armenian that served as the main language of the kingdom. Parthian, shortly after the fall of the Arsacid Parthian Empire, effectively ceases to exist, it would appear.
This presentation will introduce the practice of heritage forensics in relation to the ongoing research program of Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW). Founded in 2020 in the wake of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, CHW uses the techniques of cultural aerospace to document, detect, and deter attacks on the fragile remains of the human past. This talk is organized around three forensic dossiers on medieval and early modern heritage caught in the crosshairs of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.