Armenian Folk Arts, Culture, and Identity

Armenian Folk Arts, Culture, and Identity, edited by anthropologist Levon Abrahamian and artist and art historian Nancy Sweezy, traces this ancient culture from the end of the fourth millennium B.C., when the Kura-Arakses civilization occupied the Armenian highland, to contemporary Armenian wedding ceremonies (wherein ""the bridegroom, in his role as king during the wedding ritual"" becomes ""transformed miraculously, once in his lifetime, into the symbolic defender of the Armenian people""). Color images of ruins, landscapes, artifacts, art, households, businesses and people, as well as maps, manuscripts and paintings, appear on every page, accompanying the essays by assorted scholars. This comprehensive scholarly and pictorial history will make anyone of Armenian descent proud.