Some of best historic and cultural artifacts pulled from the earth in Armenia’s Shirak Region are housed in an earthquake damaged building tucked away in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Gyumri, the country’s second largest city.

To get to the building, which now houses the Shirak Regional Studies Museum that was founded in 1930, one better be driving a sturdy car to navigate the pot holed road.

Museum Director Hamazasp Khachatryan laments the fact that while the world knows about the priceless collection and specialists frequently visit for research purposes, average citizens do not have the possibility of viewing the treasures plucked from their native land.

When we enter the museum, Khachatryan has placed a 5,000 years-old Armenian pitcher on his work table.  On another table is a triangular piece of stone symbolizing the beginning of human creativity, and perhaps Armenia’s oldest salt jug.

Mr. Khachatryan was kind enough to answer some questions posed by Hetq about the museum and its problems.

What’s the reason that a museum with such a history has never had its own building?

No one addressed this issue back k in the day. In the past, the museum was housed in the first floor of the Gyumri Teachers Institute. That was the only place where an exhibition of the museum’s artifacts occurred.

The museum was removed from there in 1984 and put into storage. The earthquake also delayed everything. After the earthquake priority was given to the construction of schools, hospitals and apartments. We must note that there are still 3,000 homeless families.

It’s true that the issue of housing the museum has been raised several times, even until the president. The issue was almost resolved but then there was talk of relocating several ministries to Gyumri where there are practically no free buildings for the government to allocate. They’ve all been privatized.

So what solutions do you envisage?

We have proposed two options. Either to construct a new building, or to allocate the Gulbenkian Hospital building where only interior renovation is needed. But most likely they will move the ministries there.

In essence, the museum exists and academic work is conducted, but sat the same time it doesn’t exist.

The whole world knows about us. We have collaborated with large universities. But mere pedestrians can’t enter and look around.  When we conduct excavations they come in groups. Last year German professors visited with their students. For many years we had visitors from the Tokyo Technological College.

What geological excavations are taking place in Shirak as we speak?

We’ve been excavating the Sepasar site, a Bronze Age cathedral location, for ten years now. Then there’s the Haykadzor site. There’s the joint French-Armenian excavation at Yererouyk. There’s another Paleolithic dig at the basins of the four rivers in northern Armenia to locate the source of raw materials. The project was expanded to the Neolithic period and took place in Sisian, Arzni and Lousakert.  It’s ongoing.

What happens after the excavations in terms of preserving the artifacts? Have conditions been created to take tourist groups to the sites?

Not everything is preserved, only that which is threatened. Most of the digs aren’t huge in scope. There are always tourists there.

Having historical monuments isn’t enough to develop tourism. What we lack is the remaining infrastructure.