A rural family and a 3000 year-old monolith, one of two standing in their cabbage patch. They respect the old stones, believing them to have supernatural power. The farmer’s wife insists that nothing will grow around the base of the one pictured here.

An epic storyteller from the Sassoon region of Western Armenia. An illiterate genocide survivor, he continues the oral tradition of the Armenian epic poem David of Sassoon.

Old and New: A fence separates a Bronze Age tomb field from an encroaching modern cemetery. The grave in the foreground is a type of cromlech: a circular monument with a triangular flat stone placed in the middle, directed towards the sunset at the time of burial.

Many khachkars, Christian descendants of prehistoric standing stones, are still popular as shrines and attract pilgrims from surrounding villages.

A cuneiform inscription at the Urartian fortress of Erebuni. Excavated on a hilltop in the outskirts of Yerevan in the 1950’s, Erebuni is believed to be the namesake, and ancestral city, of the Armenian capitol, which dates its origin to the founding of Erebuni in 782 BC. Armenia celebrated the 2775^th anniversary of Yerevan in 1993.

Yezidi children at a temporary settlement in the Gegham Mountains. The Yezidis’ summer migration to this alpine zone echoes the semi-nomadic ways of the region’s prehistoric inhabitants, whose rock art and megaliths are haunting reminders of their own presence here, more than 3000 years ago.

Sheikh Hasan, a Yezidi religious leader, standing beside a prehistoric vishap near his summer settlement in the Gegham Mountains. Vishaps (the name means dragon) are a form of megalith unique to Armenia. Often carved as fish, they were connected with a water/fertility cult in the mid-second millennium BC, and are still considered to be supernatural by Yezidis and Armenians alike

The cave-shrine of the Virgin Barbara on the top of Mount Ara, outside of Yerevan. The shrine remains a popular place of pilgrimage, and is one of many colorful examples of pre-Christian beliefs surviving into the present day.

Inside a type of archaic rural shrine called a Tukh Manuk (Black Youth). Extremely popular throughout Armenia, such shrines are often on hilltops just outside of villages, and have been linked by Prof. James Russell to a proto-Indo-European deity cognate with Krishna: an otherworldly beautiful young man inhabiting the boundary between settlement and wilderness. The Tukh Manuk cult is traditionally popular with women. Special prayers exist to be said at these shrines, where pilgrims gather to make sacrifices (Matagh) for the curing of illnesses and burn candles. As seen in the imagery here, the convergence of Christian and pagan traditions are typical of rural Armenian spirituality.

A sacred tree in the region of Zangezoor. One of many still venerated throughout the country. Some trees are between 700 and 2000 years old.

A natural holed-stone, through which sick children are passed to cure their illness. The site is also a shrine, as the old khatchkar suggests. Locals leave broken glass and pieces of their children’s clothing behind as a way of impounding the sickness here.

A family visiting a sacred stone on the roadside.

A local boy slaughters a sacrificial chicken for pilgrims outside the shrine of the Virgin Barbara on Mt. Ara. The practice, called Matagh, remains hugely popular in Armenia.

A Yezidi matriarch with her grandchildren.