Tskhouk-Karckar

The Tskhouk-Karckar volcano group of cones and lava flows is located in the NW and central part of the Syunik Volcanic Upland along the Armenia/Azerbaijan border about 60 km SE of Lake Sevan. It was constructed within offset segments of the major Pambak-Sevan-Syunik strike-slip fault trending SE from Lake Sevan. Eight pyroclastic cones produced three generations of Holocene lava flows (Karakhanian et al., 2002). Abundant petroglyphs, burial kurgans, and masonry walls were found on flows of the older two age groups, but not on the youngest. Lava flows from these cinder cones overlie petroglyphs dated to the end of the 4th millennium and beginning of the 3rd millennium BCE and are themselves used in gravesites dated to 2770 BCE +/- 140 years. Following these eruptions, the area was not repopulated until the Middle Ages.