Material Culture

Vahe H. Apelian

This blog is my review of one of Dr. Hagop Tcholakian’s book I received recently. But I opted to title the blog as I did because  at first glance, I thought the book was about the wealth of Kessab.  The title of the book is “Kessab Mateiral Culture”. Instinctively I had associated material with wealth. I suppose we associate culture with things that transcend the material. I wondered what definition would Google provide for what culture is. It did and I quote it: “Culture can be defined as all the ways of life including arts, beliefs and institutions of a population that are passed down from generation to generation. Culture has been called "the way of life for an entire society. As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, art.” Perhaps most of us little realize  that the quality of the paint, the brush, the canvas, the stone were no less inherent, along the artist,  to produce cultural masterpieces such as the painting of Mona Lisa or  the cathedral of Notre Dame.

Tcholakian’s book is about those necessities. He titled the first chapter “The Raw Materials – Հումքերը" and started the  chapter noting that: “The raw materials that constitute the material culture of Kessab are the stone (քարը), the wood (փայտը), the cane or the reed(եղեգը), the shoots of trees or bushes (ոստն), the straw (ծեղը), the clay (կաւը), the bone (ոսկորը), the leather (կաշին), the goat hair (այծի մազը),  the wool (ոչխարին բուրդը), the cotton (բամպակը), the silk hair (ապրշումը), the domestic and wild animal hides”. In other words, everything usable that its environment produced

Stone implements

The book starts with an introduction where Hagop Tcholakian glances over the historic material culture of Kessab and the need to have it documented for the future generations who naturally would want to know how their ancestors carved a living on that mountainous terrain. 

The book is comprised of two parts. The first part is textual and is 140 pages long. It starts from page 20 and end on page 160. The second part is a collection of photographs, an album, that starts on 162 and ends on 262, marking the end of the book. Each page in this latter section has two or more pictures which are captioned and are mostly in color and hence there are many, many of them, Hagop has collected over the years. There does not seem to be a landmark and a type of the implement used that is not presented in these pictures. There are also many pencil drawings in the textual part.

Wood Implements

The textual part of the books is comprised of six chapters. In the first chapter he elaborates on the raw materials, such as the type of the stones, their quarries, the uses of different types of the stones, such as the type the Kessabtsis call kuyruk. They are bluish, light weight, crushable stones that covered the roof tops of almost all the dwellings, save a few that were covered with bricks.  Each of the raw material listed is similarly elaborated in regard to their sources, and use, such as the clay admixture that was used to cover the inner walls as an excellent insulator.  

The remaining five chapter are the uses of these raw materials, such as the types of the houses built using them, in the second chapter. The different implements made from wood and the stones and the other raw materials, and also the public structures erected such the bridges, arched structures over the springs, mills, the wells  and many others. The third chapter is devoted to the spiritual structures be it churches, chapels, tombstones. The fifth chapter elaborates on the tools made with stone, clay, wood, and metal. The sixth and the last chapter covers weaving be it straw trays or carpets, needling, dressing and others.

Metal Implements

In his introduction Dr.Tcholakian noted that during the two decades preceding the terrorist onslaught on Kessab on May 21, 2013, Kessab experienced an economic boom and became a magnet for summer vacation in the Arab world from as far as from Saudi Arabia, where families could roam on the outdoor safe and secure and without any harassment as to the type of dress the women wore and enjoyed the unmatched genuine hospitality of the Kessabtsis. Among such vacationers were the Syrian president and his family.

During that period Kessabtsis experienced a cultural revival. The old stone or wooden implements were reintroduced and were placed in the restaurants and in public places. The cement that had covered the outdoor walls were removed from many houses to have the original stones exposed. There was a drive to collect all artifacts of the old. Notable among them was the collection organized by the Father Nareg Louisian of the St. Mikael Armenian Catholic Church. He had them collected in the church complex and had named the sizeable collection he had gathered a Cilician Museum.

The March 21, 2013 onslaught put an end to the boom and the cultural revival. During their two and half months of occupation the terrorists sacked, torched houses, the stores in the market, desecrated churches and graves, and hauled everything they could lay their hands on to Turkey. The things they could not haul, they destroyed in one way or another.

Straw Trays

What remains from the past now is safely tacked away mostly in books. This illustrious son of Kessab almost single handedly salvaged the history and the material culture of Kessab. Along this book, he authored the exhaustive study of Kessab in three volumes, and in other books about the dialect of Kessab and its folk culture. He also documented for history those three harrowing terrorist onslaught days and titled the book similrarly.

The attached link (http://vhapelian.blogspot.com/2021/09/hagop-tcholakian-eminent-scholar-and.html) sheds light on the diverse and extraordinarily prodigious literary  output of Dr. Hagop Tcholakian. 

“Kessab Material Culture” was published in Yerevan in 2020. The publication of the book was sponsored by Mrs. Makrouhi Agkhacherian Kortian (Մաքրուհի Աքվաչերեան Քորթեան) from Australia, in memory of her Kessabtsi husband Hagop Kortian (Յակոբ Քորթեան). A picture of the couple graces the book.