Sitting in the shadow of the north wall of the ruined caravan house (karavanatun) at Arai-Bazarǰuł on a clear day in summer, one can see four mountain peaks. To the west above Aragats, the tallest mountain in the Republic of Armenia, clouds catch and gather, threatening to descend and change the day from sun to hail in minutes. To the northeast, the stooping shoulder of Tełenis hefts a load of radio antennas and cell towers above the Tsaghkunyats range. To the southeast, roads heading toward Lake Sevan pass behind the green slopes of volcanic Arai Ler. Due south from where the now collapsed doorway of the karavanatun would have opened onto the mountain road, the double peaks of Ararat appear over the hori-zon of the Kasakh Valley as it falls away toward the plain of the Araxes River below. The caravan inn, now a solitary ruin in a hay field, sits far out on the shoulder of Mount Aragats. Unlike the medieval villages, forts, and churches which still remain in the Kasakh Valley, tucked on mountain slopes and into the curves of riv-erbanks, the caravan house occupies the center of the view, sitting atop a rise in the surrounding wheat fields, which affords a sense of expansive proprietorship to the shepherds, harvesters, and archaeologists who rest in the shade of the ruined wall. Sitting there, drinking coffee from a shared jam jar, one’s eyes follow the trailer-trucks, marked with Turkish and Iranian names, as they roll north- and south-ward through the Kasakh Valley (now a primary route of the international transit trade through Armenia) and disappear behind the mountains. Conversation under the wall frequently turns to the world beyond the horizons. There is a solid con-sensus that Soviet shovels still beat the newer Chinese ones for quality, and every-one in the village has a brother, a father, or a husband who is currently working in Russia or Uzbekistan in construction. In Aparan, up the valley, one woman remem-bered traveling to Moscow as a little girl and standing in the crowd to see Stalin’s embalmed corpse.