ASIA Annual Conference 2025, Venice, 15.-18. Dezember 2025
In December 2025, as representatives of the Frobenius Institute, we organized the panel “Plant Knowledge in the Caucasus” at the annual conference of the Italian Association for the Study of Central Asia and the Caucasus (ASIAC).
In classical ethnological research, references to plants are usually associated with descriptions of human practices (economic practices, healing practices, and rituals) that form the actual focus of the research. In our panel, we attempted to examine such practices, the knowledge required for them, and the associated relationships from a plant-centered perspective: How have plants and humans coexisted throughout local history? How have they influenced each other? What knowledge about plants has been passed down through generations and in what form (e.g., through oral traditions, agricultural practices, art, etc.)? What new insights can be gained by looking at historical and contemporary plants and their role and use in the Central Asian and Caucasian contexts? And how is plant knowledge used in politics in the Caucasus?
Panel contributions:
Listening to Thyme: A multi-species lecture performance about pastoral ecosystems in the South Caucasus
Dr. Anja Salzer (Faculty of Design and Art, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy)
The Mulberry Tree as a Microhistory of the City’s Past and Modernization
Dr. Hamlet Melkuman (Department for Cultural Anthropology, IAE, Erivan, Armenia)
Exploring trees and tree planting as diasporic collective actions in Armenia
Dr. Tsypylma Darieva (ZOiS, Berlin)
Pomegranate Roads
Prof. Dr. Susanne Fehlings (Frobenius Institute for Research in Cultural Anthropology, Frankfurt am Main, Germany)
Radio Seeds – Investigations into Plant Knowledge in Armenia
Gabi Schaffner (Datscha Radio)
