Stone Towers

There are stone towers like this in many places around Goris – in some places people long ago excavated dwellings (caves) in them, which are often still in use as animal shelters or stores, and in some cases were still in use as dwellings until only a few decades ago. There are some such caves in this picture, more easily seen zoomed in (click in the image).

The towers are natural formations. The rock they form in is welded tuff, formed by volcanic eruptions throwing lumps of molten rock into the air, which are still sticky enough to weld together when they land in thick layers around the volcano, leaving lots of interconnected spaces between the lumps. This rock is quite easily eroded by rainwater, but where larger lumps form caps, they protect conical pillars like this beneath them from erosion.

(I understand you can see similar things in Turkey and other places, but Armenia is the only place I’ve seen them.)

Back to Armenia Thumbnails.

©Clive K Semmens 2011