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Ravello, Italy · Vienna, Austria · Forthcoming

Two papers accepted
for ICICH–ICOMOS and CHNT31

Two ArmEpiC papers have been accepted: one to the ICICH–ICOMOS International Symposium on Intangible Cultural Heritage in Ravello, the other to CHNT31 — Cultural Heritage and New Technologies in Vienna. Both rest on the Indian corpus assembled under EAP1721, the British Library Endangered Archives Programme project: one reads that material as living intangible heritage, the other describes the pipeline that encodes it.

  1. Reviving a Fading Community’s Voice: Digital Preservation of Armenian Epigraphic Heritage in India as Living Intangible Heritage

    ICICH–ICOMOS International Symposium · Ravello, Italy · 8–11 November 2026

    The symposium

  2. An End-to-End Pipeline for Schema-Validated Digital Epigraphy of the Armenian Inscriptions of India

    CHNT31 — Cultural Heritage and New Technologies · Vienna

    The programme

We would be glad to meet you there.

Graz, Austria · University of Graz · 10th Epigraphy.info Workshop · 24–26 March 2026

ArmEpiC at the 10th
Epigraphy.info Workshop in Graz

Organised by the Department of Classics, Section Ancient History and Epigraphy, together with the Epigraphy.info Steering Committee, the workshop brought together the international digital epigraphy community under the theme Sacred Spaces, Sacred Words: Digital Approaches to Religious Epigraphy.

The ArmEpiC contribution was presented by Dr Hamest Tamrazyan, Prof. Gayane Hovhannisyan, and Dr Arsen Harutyunyan.

  1. Aligning Armenian Epigraphic Conventions with the Leiden and EpiDoc Frameworks

    Read the abstract

The presentation examined one of the central methodological challenges underlying ArmEpiC: how Armenian scholarly traditions of editing inscriptions can be represented within international digital standards without losing their methodological specificity.

Armenian epigraphy developed its own systematic editorial conventions, particularly through the Divan Hay Vimagrutʿyan — the Corpus of Armenian Epigraphy. These conventions distinguish diplomatic transcription from scholarly reconstruction, and use a detailed system of signs for restorations, abbreviations, redundancies, damaged text, and other features of the inscription. The research compared them with the Leiden system and TEI/EpiDoc, identifying both areas of correspondence and elements specific to Armenian scholarship.

To address the differences, the study proposed a dual-track encoding strategy. The first track maps Armenian editorial signs onto Leiden and EpiDoc categories, enabling interoperability with international infrastructures. The second preserves the terminology, visual conventions, and methodological logic of the Armenian tradition itself.

Armenian epigraphy within global digital standards

For ArmEpiC, interoperability does not mean replacing local scholarly traditions with a universal model. The objective is a framework in which Armenian inscriptions can participate fully in international research infrastructures while retaining the philological knowledge and editorial practices developed through generations of Armenian scholarship — combining cultural specificity with FAIR data principles, transparency, reproducibility, machine readability, and long-term preservation.

The paper therefore addressed a broader question at the heart of ArmEpiC: how a standard such as EpiDoc can accommodate diverse epigraphic traditions — and how those traditions can, in turn, contribute to the development of digital epigraphy.

Florence, Italy · Università degli Studi di Firenze · 4th GEORES & 10th Arqueológica 2.0

ArmEpiC at Digital Ecosystems
for Heritage 4.0 in Florence

The opening slide projected in the conference hall at the Università degli Studi di Firenze, beside the banner of the City of Florence.
Presenting in Florence, beneath the arms of the city.

ArmEpiC was presented at Digital Ecosystems for Heritage 4.0, the joint 4th GEORES and 10th Arqueológica 2.0 Symposium, hosted by the Università degli Studi di Firenze in collaboration with ICOMOS, CIPA Heritage Documentation, and the CHEDAR Project.

Two presentations introduced complementary dimensions of the research infrastructure.

  1. Encoding Accountability: Authority Files, URN Governance, and AI-Ready Data Architecture in the Artsakh Epigraphy Atlas

    Title slide: Encoding Accountability, showing a coloured point-cloud survey of the Ponte Vecchio.

  2. The ArmEpiC Ecosystem as a Model for Interdisciplinary Training in Digital Epigraphy

    Title slide: The ArmEpiC Ecosystem as a Model for Interdisciplinary Training in Digital Epigraphy.

Together they demonstrated how ArmEpiC combines TEI/EpiDoc encoding, controlled authority files, persistent identifiers, semantic data modelling, and AI-ready research architecture with a training ecosystem designed to prepare a new generation of digital epigraphers. That training model has developed directly through research practice, bringing together community-based documentation, computational development, and university-based encoding and teaching.

A central theme was accountability in digital cultural heritage: how scholarly records are constructed, how interpretations and attributions are documented, and how digital infrastructures can make editorial decisions transparent and verifiable over time.

Hamest Tamrazyan presenting from the podium to the symposium audience.
The paper on encoding accountability, delivered to the symposium.

Armenian heritage in an international context

The conference also brought Armenian epigraphic heritage — and the heritage of Artsakh in particular — into a scholarly environment extending well beyond Armenian Studies. Researchers working in digital heritage, conservation, artificial intelligence, documentation, and cultural heritage governance encountered Armenian inscriptions not only as historical texts, but as material and documentary evidence requiring sustainable preservation, transparent attribution, and long-term scholarly accessibility.

In the case of Artsakh this has particular urgency, following the displacement of its Armenian population and amid risks of cultural erasure, reattribution, and the detachment of monuments from the communities that created and preserved them.

Digitisation therefore goes beyond the preservation of data. It contributes to the preservation of evidence, cultural memory, provenance, and historical continuity, while ensuring that Armenian epigraphic heritage remains visible, accessible, and verifiable within the international scholarly community.

Collaboration

The work presented in Florence was made possible by

  • Dr Hamest Tamrazyan
  • Dr Arsen Harutyunyan
  • Prof. Narine Sarvazyan
  • Prof. Gayane Hovhannisyan
  • Narine Galstyan
  • Yana Harutyunyan
  • Narek Meloyan
  • Zara Grigoryan
  • Narek Chilingaryan and his group of volunteers

with institutional partners EPFL, the American University of Armenia, and the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of Armenia.

Special thanks to Armine Hayrapetyan, whose photographic materials from her personal archives, and whose support from the earliest stages of the project, have made an important contribution to the documentation of Artsakh’s epigraphic heritage.

Hyderabad, India · Armenian Cemetery, Uppuguda · EAP1721 · 2025

A cemetery cleared
in Hyderabad

Beyond its primary objective of digitising endangered Armenian inscriptions, EAP1721 has already contributed to a heightened awareness of cultural heritage preservation within the local communities. The clearest instance came during the initial field visit to Hyderabad.

Two members of the project team recording a gravestone, one steadying a camera on a tripod beside a stone cross.
Fieldwork: recording a gravestone in situ.

The Armenian cemetery there was found in a neglected state, with gravestones obscured by dense vegetation. Following discussions initiated by the project team and the dissemination of related publications on social media, cooperation was established with a representative of the Hyderabad Museum, the institution responsible for the site’s maintenance. A joint cleaning effort was subsequently organised, involving local volunteers and members of the Armenian community.

The Telangana Department of Archaeology protected-monument board at the cemetery gate, lettered in English and Telugu, reading “Armenian Cemetery, Uppuguda, Lalitha Bagh”.
A protected monument, at Uppuguda in Hyderabad.
A domed tomb standing behind dense shrubs and trees inside the cemetery wall.
Masonry lost behind the scrub.
A wide view of the burial ground under grass, with an information board on a post and modern apartment blocks rising immediately behind the wall.
The site, hemmed in by the city.
The same flat gravestone with the surrounding grass partly cut away, the cut stems lying across the slab.
The grass cut back from the slab.
A volunteer in a white vest cutting the grass around a gravestone by hand with a short blade.
Cleared by hand, with local volunteers.

Before and after

Clearing the ground is what makes the record possible: an inscription that cannot be seen cannot be read, photographed or encoded.

A flat granite gravestone almost entirely hidden by tall dense grass.
Before: a gravestone under dense grass.
A dark basalt gravestone photographed square-on after clearing, incised with a cross and six lines of Armenian erkatʿagir script, fully legible.
After: a stone cleared and recorded — EAP1721 record HYDERABAD_0008_003.

The tomb of Khoja Voskan

The clearing extended to the gravestone of Khoja Voskan, which had been lost beneath fallen fronds and accumulated debris against the boundary wall.

The raised tomb slab of Khoja Voskan beside a boundary wall, strewn with fallen palm fronds, plastic litter and broken branches.
The tomb of Khoja Voskan, under fallen fronds and litter.
The same raised tomb seen from the other end, its slab covered in dry leaf fall beneath a railed wall.
The same tomb from the far end, under leaf fall.

This collaboration enabled the documentation work to proceed effectively and, importantly, stimulated renewed local engagement with the preservation of Armenian heritage. The project has also received media attention and recognition beyond India, with publications in India, France and the United States.

Following the visibility of the initiative, the team has been contacted by individuals and institutions from other regions — notably Iraq and Ukraine — expressing interest in extending similar documentation efforts to Armenian and multi-ethnic heritage sites in their areas. This indicates both the scalability and the transformative potential of the project, whose methodological framework can be adapted to diverse contexts.

Two team members inside a white arched hall, one setting up a tripod-mounted camera in front of a framed wall panel.
Setting up to photograph a wall panel.
Two team members photographing gravestones set against a boundary wall, one standing with a light meter raised, one crouching with a camera.
Photographing the stones along the boundary wall.

As part of a comprehensive heritage preservation concept, the documentation of inscriptions represents one of the most vulnerable components of the broader cultural record — highly exposed to environmental, human and political risks. Strengthening this component therefore contributes to the safeguarding of epigraphic material and to the resilience of the wider heritage ecosystem.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Michael Stephan and Devin Ryan Pearl for their dedicated work and professional photographic documentation.