Medieval Caucasus Panels: Leeds IMC 2024


For those of you at the International Medieval Congress 2024, we hope you’ll be joining us on Monday July 1st for our panel series this year. Please note that the planned session I, Cities and Economies, has been withdrawn due to some panelists being unable to attend.

The Caucasus In Crisis

Religion and Belief (Panel, 14:15 – 15:45)
Session chair: Nick Evans

These papers touch on a range of different ways in which religion and faith shaped responses to and moments of crisis in the medieval Caucasus, from their intersections with early medieval politics to the crises facing monastic institutions and faith communities.

Bone, Blood, and Stone: Polluting Bodies in Medieval Armenian Landscapes
Kate Franklin, Birkbeck, University of London and Ani Honarchian, Saint Louis University, Missouri

Disappearing Evidence: Uncovering the History of a Monastery in Peril
Whitney Kite, Columbia University

In the Midst of Crisis: The Leadership of Catholicos Viro in Early 7th-Century Caucasian Albania
Alexander Kavtaradze, Ilia State University, Tbilisi

A Paradoxical ‘Golden Age’: Political Crisis and Architectural Production in 7th-Century Armenia
Cassandre Lejosne, Université de Lausanne

Conflict and State (Panel, 16:30 – 18:00)
Session Chair: James Baillie

These papers will approach conflict and states in the medieval Caucasus from three different angles, offering archaeological, art historical, and historical analysis of different aspects. The papers draw from a diverse set of material and textual evidence, from survey and excavations to under-utilised inscription and visual source material, to analyse political shifts at different scales, from the ways that rulers responded to key moments of internal crisis such as conflict and succession, to the navigation of political and ecological change from the perspective of highland communities.

The Political Crisis of 1177-1178 in Georgia and Its Importance for the Development of the Country
Karaman Pagava, Independent Scholar

Dynastic Legitimacy: The Visual Responses to Royal Successions in High Medieval Georgia
Irakli Tezelashvili, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London

Adaptability and Resilience in the South Caucasus Highlands
Michelle Cleary, Landscape Archaeology in Georgia Project, Tbilisi, Georgia

A Region of Crisis? (Roundtable, 19:00-20:00)

The Caucasus is sometimes portrayed as a region of perpetual crisis – a fragmented land torn between imperial powers and internally riven by ethnic and religious dividing lines. The dramatic terrain, the wide cultural and linguistic diversity of the region, and more recent tragedies between the region’s modern nation-state formations have all helped to concretise this image of an eternally fractured Caucasus in wider imaginations. Considering other perspectives and alternative possibilities, however, may bring much-needed nuance to this picture, considering the histories of people across the region building cultural exchange, commerce, varying identities, and alternative or overlapping senses of community. In this panel, a range of experts on different methodologies, regions, and epochs within the Caucasus’ medieval period examine the concept of eternal crisis and discuss its relationship to the medieval Caucasus world and to how we see those histories today.

The panelists will be James Baillie, Hannah Barker, Ani Honarchian, and Nicholas Matheou: the session will be chaired by Nick Evans.


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