Dragon Stones in context. The discovery of high-altitude burial grounds with sculpted stelae in the Armenian mountains

“Dragon stones” (Armenian vishapakar) are standing stones carved with animal imagery found in the high-altitude summer pastures of modern Armenia and neighboring regions. So far, their existence has been largely ignored by the international scientific community and their function and dating have remained the object of speculation. In June 2012, an Armenian–German team started the first systematic archaeological investigation of the Armenian dragon stones. This article offers an introduction to the topic and presents the results of the first fieldwork season. Most importantly, it reveals for the first time that the dragon stones are systematically associated with Bronze Age burial mounds. Thus, dragon stones are unraveled as a monumental feature of a previously unknown high-altitude mortuary landscape, probably connected with the economic exploitation of summer pastures by early transhumant pastoralists.