Field work Armenia

As part of an FWF-funded research project, we visited several caves and collected speleothem samples, primarily through coring. The field campaign was carried out in collaboration with colleagues from the Institute of Geological Sciences, National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia—Khachatur Meliksetian, Lilit Sahakyan, and Ara Avagyan—and their highly motivated students.
Although Armenia is largely dominated by volcanic and metamorphic rocks, it is also home to an estimated 1,500 caves developed in carbonate formations. These cave systems offer considerable potential for palaeoenvironmental, archaeological, and speleogenetic research, making them valuable archives of the region’s natural and human history.