Tskhouk-Karckar

Tskhouk-Karckar is a group of pyroclastic cones (ash-and-cinder hills) on the northwest side of Tskhouk volcano, part of the Syunik volcanic ridge that runs along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. The cones sit on an older base of rhyolite, basaltic andesite and dacite, and their lava flows are grouped into three stages by age and how well they've held up.

Under the youngest of those flows, petroglyphs (rock carvings) turned up, cracked apart by earthquakes after the lava had already covered them. Radiocarbon dating on graves caught inside the flows points to activity between the 4th and early 3rd millennium BC, with a further date around 4720 ± 140 years ago. The last eruptive phase appears to have driven people out of the area entirely; it wasn't resettled until the medieval period.

The site lies in Syunik region, on the border with Azerbaijan, about 138 km east-southeast of Yerevan in a straight line.