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The South Caucasus occupies the divide between ancient Mesopotamia and prehistoric Europe, and was thus crucial in the development of Old World societies. Chronologies for the region, however, have lacked the definition achieved in surrounding areas. Concentrating on the Tsaghkahovit Plain of north-western Armenia, Project ArAGATS's multi-site radiocarbon dataset has now produced Bayesian modelling, which provides tight chronometric support for tracing the transmission of technology, population movement and social developments that shaped the Eurasian Bronze and Iron Ages.

Over the last two decades, mobility has gained new prominence within anthropology, particularly in theories of globalization, immigration, and subjectivity. At stake in all of the recent ethnographic and archaeological work on mobility is not just how anthropologists conceptualize mobility, but also how we conceptualize the political. Many discussions of mobile subjects have seemed to challenge traditional understandings of the political that are synonymous with a monolithic state and a stable, sedentary subject population. Yet, we maintain that there are still challenges to a coherent anthropological theory of mobility and its relation to the political. To address these challenges, we forward a conceptual framework of mobility that is grounded in the practices, perceptions, and conceptions of movement entwined with processes of emplacement. Illustrated by case studies from the Late Bronze Age (1500 – 1150 B.C.) South Caucasus and nineteenth-century Nova Scotia, the conceptual framework that we detail understands mobility as a mediator between political subjects and political institutions, thus making it possible to examine how subjects and institutions are continuously remade in relation to each other.

“Bioarchaeology” has recently made its way into publications and presentations on the physical anthropology and archeology of Armenia. Like other regions discussed in this book, bioarchaeology has been heralded as a new and important approach to analyze skeletal remains that moves away from typology toward historical reconstruction of human behavior. Yet, the questions asked, discussions, and presentation of skeletal analysis look quite different from Western—and particularly American—bioarchaeology. This chapter explores the history of the physical anthropology of skeletal materials from Armenia, tracing the major debates and interpretations from the late nineteenth century, through Soviet ethnogenesis, to recent trends that have shaped the discipline within Armenia today. In each major period of research, the ways that physical anthropologists have analyzed skeletal remains and interpreted past peoples have shifted. Thus, while the question of Armenian origins has remained a constant theme; the different approaches in each period of research have allowed for distinctly different claims about the relationship between populations in the past and the present. These ways of thinking about the past in relation for the present have implications for how bioarchaeology is and can be incorporated into the analysis of archeological human remains in Armenia.