Lori Khatchadourian

Heritage Forensics introduces a new framework for investigating cultural heritage caught up in war, ethnic cleansing, and secrecy. The volume combines satellite-based spatial analysis with humanistic research and humanitarian concern to document the impact of the protracted conflict between Armenian and Azerbaijan on the medieval and modern heritagescape of the South Caucasus. Drawing on the findings of Caucasus Heritage Watch, the authors demonstrate how cultural erasure, looting, and violence have inflicted harm on historical sites and the descendant communities for whom they hold enduring significance. Out of the forensic materials provided by the Nagorno-Karabakh Wars, Lori Khatchadourian, Adam T. Smith, Ian Lindsay, and Husik Ghulyan offer a reflexive approach for bearing witness to abuses of cultural heritage that emphasizes historical and political context and the careful use of powerful technologies in an era of post-truths. Heritage Forensics establishes a model for investigating cultural heritage threatened by political violence and is an invaluable resource for scholars, journalists, activists, and policy makers alike.

Heritage Forensics introduces a new framework for investigating cultural heritage caught up in war, ethnic cleansing, and secrecy. The volume combines satellite-based spatial analysis with humanistic research and humanitarian concern to document the impact of the protracted conflict between Armenian and Azerbaijan on the medieval and modern heritagescape of the South Caucasus. Drawing on the findings of Caucasus Heritage Watch, the authors demonstrate how cultural erasure, looting, and violence have inflicted harm on historical sites and the descendant communities for whom they hold enduring significance. Out of the forensic materials provided by the Nagorno-Karabakh Wars, Lori Khatchadourian, Adam T. Smith, Ian Lindsay, and Husik Ghulyan offer a reflexive approach for bearing witness to abuses of cultural heritage that emphasizes historical and political context and the careful use of powerful technologies in an era of post-truths. Heritage Forensics establishes a model for investigating cultural heritage threatened by political violence and is an invaluable resource for scholars, journalists, activists, and policy makers alike.

What is the role of the material world in shaping the tensions and paradoxes of imperial sovereignty? Scholars have long shed light on the complex processes of conquest, extraction, and colonialism under imperial rule. But imperialism has usually been cast as an exclusively human drama, one in which the world of matter does not play an active role. Lori Khatchadourian argues instead that things - from everyday objects to monumental buildings - profoundly shape social and political life under empire. Out of the archaeology of ancient Persia and the South Caucasus, Imperial Matter advances powerful new analytical approaches to the study of imperialism writ large and should be read by scholars working on empire across the humanities and social sciences.