Preservation of Memory and Family Through Jewelry Archives

In historic Armenia, jewelry was valued and used for a wide variety of reasons: religious, cultural, and symbolic. Due to the attempted genocide, historic Armenia was leveled: nearly everything within it (including people, buildings, and cultural centers) destroyed. As authentic pieces of jewelry from this region begin to make their way through the diaspora, they serve today as an important mechanism for piecing together bits of a culture and peoples shattered and scattered by attempted genocide. 

Examining jewelry artifacts is a pertinent way of linking the past with the present, honoring victims of genocide (both survivors and deceased), and preventing the aims of genocide from fully manifesting by actively fighting against the annihilation and erasure it attempts.