The Armenian-Italian Joint Expedition at Dvin (Armenia). Report of 2022 activities

The joint Armenian-Italian expedition to Dvin of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of RA and of the University of Florence and Italian Foreign Office (also supported by Fondation Max Van Berchem), from October 1 to November 15, 2022, carried out archaeological research at the site of Dvin, one of the largest medieval cities in Armenia. Excavations were concentrated in three sites: the Dvin market (Fig. 1/1), whose archaeological research began in the 1950s and resumed in 2021 (Łafadaryan 1982, 106‑9, Petrosyan, Nucciotti, 2022), south of the Lower Fortress - in the eastern part (fig. 1/2), where the Italian team continued the micro-stratigraphic analyses in area 1000, started in 2021 with a sondage of 5x5 square meters (enlarged in 2022, see below) and in the site where the foreseen future building of Dvin Museum will be located, some 120 meters southeast of the Central District of the city, in the part of the field now used for agricultural purposes (fig. 1/3). The latest location corresponds to the interconnection between the medieval moats respectively bordering the Dvin citadel and the Central District.