Not the Kardashians' Armenia

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00:06

Laura Tedesco
And you have to take into consideration, at that time, a young woman independent graduate student researcher going to certain countries wasn't tenable. It was a little bit of a bridge too far. I had to be conscious of that. And working in Armenia, post-Soviet era, women had for decades and decades under the Soviet system played prominent roles in scientific life. A woman archaeologist was not new or freakish. I could function there, I would get access to museum collections. I could interact with the Armenian men archaeologists and it wasn't strange or weird. Armenia presented just a really interesting area of opportunity.

00:54
George Gavrilis

Before the pandemic, I got to spend a few days in Armenia at a conference. The capital city Yerevan has such a great vibe. Huge open squares, leafy green streets, and awesome restaurants and cafes. And the roads in the surrounding countryside are in pretty good shape, and that makes it easy to jaunt out to very cool archaeological sites, like the Roman-era temple at Garni or Geghard Monastery, carved right out of a mountainside.

01:21

George Gavrilis

But this is Armenia now, not the one our archeologist got to know on her first digs. Back in 1993, after the Soviet Union crumbled, Laura went to Armenia with a small group of Americans to work on a site dating to 800 BC, an Urartian fortress near the town of Gyumri. The country was in economic turmoil and the only things plentiful were shortages: shortages of hot water, gas, and food.

01:48

George Gavrilis

In this episode, Laura talks about her first impressions of the country and the reason why an Urartian fortress matters in history, even if most of what the team unearthed still sits in crates in some building in an Armenian provincial town. Oh, and there is also the bit about the guy who asked Laura to marry him.

02:09

George Gavrilis
This is Monuments Woman with Laura Tedesco. I'm your host George Gavrilis. If you are new to this podcast, we recommend going back to start with Episode 1. For everyone else, welcome back. Let's jump in.

02:25
George Gavrilis

Laurie, what happened today at your house?

02:27
Laura Tedesco
So I was sitting on my front porch sipping coffee, as I do every morning, and I heard a commotion, kind of in the leaves off to the side of the porch. And I looked over and I saw that one of my cats was pouncing on something, which was pretty uncharacteristic for this cat. I saw that it was a juvenile Copperhead snake. And I was like, oh, okay. So this is very close to my front door. The cat's laser-focused on this. And then I watched the snake strike my cat in the leg. 

03:03

Laura Tedesco

The cat jumped back. Clearly, he was startled, and maybe a little bit hurt because he was holding up his leg. He tried to walk back and look like he didn't want to put any weight on it. That was like a lot to take in at that one moment. So I was trying to not get too close to the snake because when there's a juvenile Copperhead, there are going to be siblings of that Copperhead nearby.

03:27
Laura Tedesco

That was issue one. Issue two was, how's the cat doing? So I was able to get the cat inside. Immediately I called one of my brothers who kind of knows a lot about snakes. Alright, what do I do? We gamed it out. And the solution was, look on Google. That's what I did.

03:46

Laura Tedesco

And, you know, wealth of information when you're in a pinch. I basically watched the cat. And I looked for all the symptoms you're supposed to look for.

03:55
George Gavrilis
So you didn't suck the venom out of its leg or anything like that?

03:59
Laura Tedesco
No, they actually said don't do that.

04:01
George Gavrilis
Yeah. Why is that?

04:02
Laura Tedesco
I don't know, George. And then another one was— Don't try to cut the cat to make it bleed. The cat was never gonna let me do that.

04:11
George Gavrilis

[laughs]

04:13

Laura Tedesco
So anyway, I kept an eye on him. He is 100% fine. After a few hours, he stopped limping and was ready to go back outside. But it didn't solve the problem of the snakes that are probably residing way too close to my house. I got to figure out what to do about that.

04:34
George Gavrilis
Do you consider your yard a dangerous place?

04:37

Laura Tedesco
No. Generally not. There's bunnies and raccoons and all kinds of creatures. And evidently, snakes. It comes with the territory. There are eagles...

04:51

George Gavrilis
Much like your job in Afghanistan.

04:54

Laura Tedesco
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, actually, kind of. Fair enough. 

04:59
George Gavrilis 

Okay. Yeah, seeing as how we treated your yard as a microcosm for Afghanistan, why don't we dive right in?

05:06

Laura Tedesco
Sure.

05:11

Laura Tedesco

"June 18, 1993. Arrived today in Moscow to cloudy weather. The trip through customs was especially long, but I was relieved to see my luggage circle on the carousel in safety. One fear dispelled. The evening spent in the Moscow Country Club, a refuge for dignitaries and expats. Such a deluxe place with unlimited dinner and wine and beer. After dinner, we retreated to a sauna, which was perfectly relaxing after the flight. Evidently an Armenian archaeologist arranged our stay here through the Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. The assembled group seems fairly nice, and everyone trying to impress each other with their studies and knowledge of Near Eastern archaeology. Such boring dinner conversation. The evening seemed to last forever. But, the night sky was light all night long."

06:15
George Gavrilis
Hey, so last time, we were talking about the time you spent in Armenia.

06:20
Laura Tedesco

Hmm.

06:22
George Gavrilis
Tell me, tell me what were you— what were you digging up over there? Oh, give it a little bit of context too, though, because this is not the Armenia of 2021.

06:32
Laura Tedesco
No, hardly, hardly the Armenia of today. I first traveled for archaeology to Armenia in 1993. That was shortly after the Soviet Union had collapsed. It was a very hard time for Armenia. They were blockaded on every border, except for the part that they share with Georgia. It was hard to find really anything— fuel, food. This wasn't that long after there was a really devastating earthquake in the northern part of Armenia. So they were still recovering from that. And it was pretty poor.

07:11
Laura Tedesco

And I went to work on a joint American-Armenian excavation. And I didn't know that part of the world at all. So it was very new to me. And I was also very junior in archaeology, like I was still wrapping my head around the discipline and the way one works as an archaeologist in the field.

07:39

Laura Tedesco

"June 19, 1993. Armenia, at last. I feel lonely now, settled in the hotel in Horom. There's no electricity, very little water. This will be our compound for the duration of the excavation. The last 24 hours have been more than grueling. Now that I have a moment to stop, I feel weak with fatigue, and weepy. We started early in Moscow yesterday, and saw very little of what I believed would make the city unique. Red Square, but only for the photo op. And then back to the airport, where we waited for eight hours for the flight, only to arrive in Yerevan after midnight." 

08:26
Laura Tedesco

So I remember showing up in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, by way of Moscow, which was kind of a trippy journey. 

08:36

George Gavrilis
What do you mean by that? What do you mean?

08:37
Laura Tedesco
I flew on Aeroflot Airlines. It was when you could still smoke on airplanes. It was just all kind of new, like you go JFK to Moscow on Aeroflot. Think we changed airports. It took 39 hours, the whole journey, and arrived in Yerevan in the middle of the night and was with several other Americans, whom I had never met previously. Arrived in Yerevan in the middle of the night, was picked up at the airport in the pitch dark, because there was really not electricity. And started a drive, which I think should have really only been about a two- to three-hour drive. And it ended up taking like eight hours because the van that was driving us ran out of fuel halfway.

09:28
Laura Tedesco
By the time we got from the airport in Yerevan to the city, where we were going to stay to do the archaeology, I was like best friends with all, you know, six, seven, eight other Americans that we were packed in this van and ended up standing on the side of the road, watching the sunrise and drinking. I didn't drink at that time in my life. But there was a lot of bottles of vodka being passed around. 

09:54
Laura Tedesco

As the sun came up, we happened to have stopped by the most beautiful poppy field I've ever seen. That's the dominant memory for me. And that warmed my heart to Armenia far more than, oh shoot, there's no fuel— the driver of the truck of the van we were in, I don't know where he got like a cup of gas to keep us going. But he managed to.

10:28
Laura Tedesco

So I stayed there, it would have been maybe eight or 10 weeks, so got to know things. And we were— on the weekends, we were traveling around Armenia and looking at other archaeological sites. I was getting to know Armenians and the food and the climate. And there's no hot water. Okay, well, that's fine. Just take a cold shower, and things like that.

10:50
Laura Tedesco

And I ended up working in Armenia for a number of years, after that time. And I ultimately did my PhD thesis on archaeological material from Armenia.

11:03

George Gavrilis
What were the sites like that you were digging up?

11:06
Laura Tedesco
The particular site that I was working on was this enormous fortress site, Urartian, is the sort of civilization. It's an early Iron Age site. So B.C., about 1,000 to 800, 700 B.C., just to put it on a timeline. And It was just this enormous fortification, and then with the things that go with that, a palace room and store rooms and rooms where animals would be kept. Picture something the size of a soccer field or a little bit bigger, the size of this big fortified building we were excavating.

11:46
Laura Tedesco

And then off to the side were all of these Bronze Age tombs, which were fascinating— because in a Bronze Age tomb, often the wealth would have been buried with the individual, at least in this instance. So at some point in the excavation, I don't know if I was banished or what, but I was told to go off and go excavate one of those Bronze Age tombs. 

12:09
Laura Tedesco

I was set with like a crew of five Armenians, workmen, who were really doing the heavy work. And I was there to take notes and do the lighter work. I wasn't wielding a pickaxe, in other words. And the tomb that I was assigned to excavate— no one could have known this in advance— it was empty. It's called a cenotaph. It's sort of like a placeholder for someone who died, but there's nothing inside. That was a little bit of a bummer.

12:36

Laura Tedesco
But overall and to this day, I think of Armenia so fondly, and the food is outstanding, and the wine and the cognac that they produce. And Armenians are so warm, and in my experience, extremely well-educated, sophisticated. I haven't been back and I was actually supposed to go last year, but then COVID got in the way. And so I still have flight vouchers to fly to Yerevan that I'm waiting to use.

13:14

Laura Tedesco

"July 11, 1993, Horom. The cold water baths at the end of each day are getting tiresome. After the dusty work, I never feel entirely clean. The work is intense. All the excavations, the observations. The church we saw last week was spectacular, but more so were the women who broke out into song, as we waited out the storm inside the church. The Armenian architect proposed. It's flattering, but seems so abrupt. I only just met him a few weeks ago."

14:03

George Gavrilis
Hey, so speaking of the warmth of Armenians…

14:03

Laura Tedesco
Yeah …

14:04

George Gavrilis
...you spent a lot of time there. So you would have made friends, you would have dated people, I suppose.

14:09
Laura Tedesco

I definitely made friends. And in the first season, so 1993, I was yet to begin grad school. So I was somewhere in between undergraduate and graduate studies. I knew I was going to NYU. I had already been accepted and I was heading there. An Armenian architect who was working on the excavation as sort of the site architect, he seemed to fancy me. And that was lovely. And I was intrigued because he seemed so exotic to me. It wasn't just that he was a very kind and funny, interesting person, also, and he was quite a bit older than I was at the time.

14:58

George Gavrilis
Paint a picture. What did he look like?

15:00
Laura Tedesco
Well, dark hair, not very tall, not athletic in the slightest. Very smart. And he seemed extremely resourceful— just like scrappy, resourceful. He knew how to get things that were hard to find. And I think that was a way he kind of wooed me with, you know, showing up with products that were hard to find. I don't remember what those products were, but—

15:30

George Gavrilis
Like Maybe, maybe gas to get back to the city?

15:32
Laura Tedesco
Maybe gas, or heat. So I was a little bit skeptical, but I was also interested and I genuinely liked him. He ended up taking me all over Armenia, and to these beautiful sites and showing me— there's this one Roman site in Armenia, where he had done his PhD. And so he showed me that and then he brought me to Moscow, and gave me the cook's tour of Moscow. And he knew the city very well, because he had gone to university and graduate school in Moscow.

16:07
Laura Tedesco
At the end of this summer, he asked me to marry him. And I was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. And I said, you know, I'm not saying no, but I'm not saying yes. And I was like, I gotta go back to New York and start grad school. And, like, that feels like a little bit much.

16:29

George Gavrilis
Right? You're still really young.

16:30
Laura Tedesco
I was.

16:31

George Gavrilis
How old were you at the time?

16:33
Laura Tedesco
I was 23. And he was 33. And so I said, you know, if you can find a way to come to New York, and then we can talk about it. 

16:45

George Gavrilis
Wait, did you mean that when you said that?

16:47
Laura Tedesco
I did mean that, but I was ambivalent. And I, I think in the back of my mind—

16:54

George Gavrilis
But you'd be fine either way?

16:55
Laura Tedesco
Well, I don't think I was that cold-hearted about it. But I also was— getting married at that age was just not what I wanted to do. It wasn't that I was anti-marriage. I just wasn't ready. Although I was intrigued, because I was like, well, maybe, maybe this is my guy.

17:21
Laura Tedesco

He somehow, through his resourcefulness, his scrappy resourcefulness, secured a visa when it was pretty hard for Armenians to get visas to come to the United States. And he showed up. And within a week, he was renting an apartment in Brooklyn, from a Ukrainian lady. And he was reading the Russian papers that were coming out of Brighton Beach and networking. He ended up starting an import-export business and stayed in New York for five years. And we dated off and on.

17:50
Laura Tedesco
The topic of marriage rarely came up while he was living in Brooklyn, and we were not living together. But throughout those five years, I was traveling quite often to Armenia, at Christmas and spending summers there and to do archaeology or not to do archaeology. It might have been to hang out with his family.

18:13
Laura Tedesco

One day after five years, and I had just come back from my first archaeological season in Syria, I phoned him and I said, I can't marry you. And he said, Okay. And he left New York a week later.

18:30
George Gavrilis 

Just okay?

18:31
Laura Tedesco
I don't remember his exact words. I might have written them in my journal. But that one's in a box somewhere in the attic.

18:38
George Gavrilis
Oh, you have to take that one out and see.

18:40
Laura Tedesco
Maybe. Anyway, he left. I never saw him again. I've never spoken to him again. I know he got married to a woman whom I knew in Yerevan, a lovely, lovely— she was also an archaeologist, is an archaeologist, or was, I don't know if she still is. And I think of him fondly. I hope he's doing really well. And I'm really glad I didn't marry him.

19:11

George Gavrilis
Right, there's that part too.

19:13

Laura Tedesco
Yeah. 

19:46
George Gavrilis
Okay, hold up now. Because that just kind of blew my mind.

19:51

Laura Tedesco
Why?

19:53
George Gavrilis
Because I'm not an archaeologist. And so I assume you dig shit up— you're like, wow, look at this gold statue, look at this buddha.

20:02

Laura Tedesco
[laughing]

20:03

George Gavrilis
Look at this extremely rare pottery sherd, right to the museum! And you're saying no.

20:11
Laura Tedesco

No.

20:12
George Gavrilis
Why? Why? Say more.

20:13
Laura Tedesco
If you're excavating at Mes Aynak in Afghanistan, what I'm about to tell you does not apply, because that site is so rich with the statues and the kinds of things that you're envisioning. I mean, one better than the next— Oh, this one is painted in rare pigments. Oh, that statue from Mes Aynak is gilded in gold. Oh my gosh. But that's the exception. The vast majority of archaeological sites, what archaeologists are looking for, is information about how people lived. Those remains are not that interesting. So, it's bucket after bucket after bucket of broken pottery sherd, okay? No one wants to look at that in a museum.

21:04

Laura Tedesco
Or, little bits of stone tools— okay, might be interesting for someone interested in stone tools. But the Metropolitan Museum is not going to put that in a museum case. The vast majority of what would have been excavated, the material, the artifacts, while I was working in Armenia, are probably still in crates and boxes, in the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Archaeology, in Yerevan, or they might be in an office in the city Gyumri, which is the closest city to the archaeological site.

21:40
Laura Tedesco

That's just how it goes, George…

21:42
George Gavrilis
Ok, ok.

21:43
Laura Tedesco
It's not, what is that, like the Lost Ark of the Covenant? That's rare.

21:48

George Gavrilis
So what, then, did you learn, if it was largely a forensic dig—

21:53

Laura Tedesco

Oh.

24:17

George Gavrilis
— to understand more about how people were living and dying at the time? What did you walk away knowing or learning?

21:59
Laura Tedesco

You understand Urartian architectural styles, you understand how they built their fortifications, the orientation of the buildings and where certain threats may have been coming from— east, west, north, south. And then that tells you something about the larger political context of the time. You learn about the economy of the place, based on how fancy their ceramics are. 

22:26
Laura Tedesco

I don't know if you have your fancy plates and dishes that you use at holidays plus your everyday stuff. That means that you have a certain level of wealth that you can afford two sets of dishes. Or your sterling silverware that you only use on holidays, and then your regular everyday stainless steel stuff. All of these things, they provide information that then helps you understand a story about a larger economy, and a community, a culture, a civilization. Depends on the scale that you're trying to understand things. 

23:02

Laura Tedesco
Or where you might find artifacts that come from very far away. If you were to find lapis lazuli, that beautiful blue stone that's mined in Afghanistan. If you were to find, say, some beads for a necklace that were carved from lapis lazuli, at this site in Armenia, you would know, Oh, there are trade routes. And so let's look at this bigger, interconnected economy. If there's objects trading, and there are ideas, also trading, and influences. 

23:39
Laura Tedesco

That's mostly what archaeologists are interested in, whether it's in Armenia, or Jamestown, Virginia, or in Greece, or, you know, in Sicily. Take your pick. China? The possibilities are endless, George.

23:58

George Gavrilis
Cool. Well, we got to explore more endless possibilities. 

24:11

George Gavrilis
Hey, earlier, you were talking about how you kept diaries along the way. When did you first start keeping a diary?

24:22

Laura Tedesco
Don't you keep a diary?

24:23

George Gavrilis
I'm too lazy to write about my day, especially since most of my days are just so horribly dissatisfying. Oh my god, I didn't just say that— I have a two-year old, I have to take that back right now.

24:38

Laura Tedesco
[laughs]

24:39

George Gavrilis
Before I was a dad, most of my days were too boring, mundane and dissatisfying to want to revisit them by writing about them at the end of that day.

24:53

Laura Tedesco
Hmm.

24:54

George Gavrilis
How's that? Did I make up for that?

24:55

Laura Tedesco
Pretty much.

24:56

George Gavrilis
Okay.

24:48

Laura Tedesco
So I started keeping a diary when I was a girl. I was probably around 10 years old. I probably got a blank journal as a gift one year. I guess I was inclined to, to write stuff. So I would just write. I don't really remember much of what I wrote at that age. But I do remember writing and pretty consistently all through high school and well into college. It's just something I've always done. I don't write every day, sometimes weeks, months will go by in between my writing something. It might be something that happened that day that seems significant at the time.

25:37

Laura Tedesco
I might write lyrics from a song that I really like or a turn of phrase in a book or a magazine article that is meaningful to me, I might write that down. It's just a way for me also to write about my feelings about things and it helps me process them by writing them down— helps me work through blind spots and struggles and hard things, and grief, and love.

26:15

George Gavrilis
And I get that, I get that. Is it odd, though, to reread diary entries from back in the day? It's almost like you're being a voyeur on your own life.

26:26

Laura Tedesco
It is weird. Until we started doing this podcast, I had decidedly not re-read anything I had written for the first two years I was in Afghanistan. And that journal was so heavy and significant for me that I wrapped it up and I tucked it away, like I'd only use maybe like half of the pages. So I hadn't even filled the whole thing up. And I was— I got to put this one away, and start with a brand new book, like a brand new empty blank page book.

26:55

Laura Tedesco
It wasn't until we started doing this podcast that I started reviewing my journal from the year and a half or so that I spent in Kabul. Some days I did not like re-reading it at all. It reminded me of some really hard things. And it also reminded me of some events and things I had done that I had totally forgotten about. Like, Oh, I forgot that time we were stuck in a minefield. I guess I'd blocked that out. But then I remembered when I read it in my journal. So, I still keep a diary now. It sits on my desk. I recommend it, George.

27:40

George Gavrilis
Yeah?

27:42

Laura Tedesco
Can't hurt.

27:43

George Gavrilis
Maybe.

27:44

Laura Tedesco
You're a writer. You're a writer by nature.

27:48

George Gavrilis
Yeah, but I'm not a fan of my own writing. I always think that everybody else writes far better than I do. So what's the point?

27:55

Laura Tedesco
Hm...

27:56

George Gavrilis
You know?

27:57
Laura Tedesco

Yeah.

28:04

George Gavrilis
You've been listening to Monuments Woman with Laura Tedesco. I'm your host George Gavrilis. Don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. To stay in touch, also follow us on Instagram at the_monuments_woman. Join us next week when we dive deeper.

28:20

George Gavrilis
This show is produced by Christian D. Bruun and May Eleven Projects. It is recorded by Audivita Studios, and edited by Shaun Hettinger and Greg Williams. The theme song is This Love by Ariana Delawari, featuring Salar Nader.

Ep 16: Not the Kardashians' Armenia — Love of Archaeology, Part 2 of 3

Topics Covered in this Episode
The Copperhead snake
Armenia in 1993 versus of Armenia of 2021
Arriving in Armenia greeted by the sunrise
Armenia, focus for several years, Urartian excavation material
The Armenian architect
Where is the Urartian material now?
Keeping a diary

Recorded on July 19, 2021