Prof. Peter J. Cobb directs the Ararat Plain Southeast Archaeological Project (APSAP), surveying and excavating sites on the southeastern edge of the Armenian Araxes River Valley. The project explores the movement of people through the landscape and human occupation of the area, with particular focus on the transition from Bronze to Iron Age as well as the Medieval period in the region. The project’s main excavation is of the Late Bronze and Iron Age (1500–800 BCE) site of Vedi Fortress, located near the village of Dashtakar in Armenia. Work at the site, which is in a defensive position at the entrance to the valley and in view of Mount Ararat, has discovered traces of fortress walls, pottery fragments, bones, and charcoal deposits of medieval and earlier settlements.

How do we, as readers or movie viewers, enter a fictional world? This question has long been of interest to psychologists and filmmakers. To offer a fresh perspective on the topic, we analyzed a specific type of comments made by users on some online viewing platforms: time-synchronic comments, i.e., comments superimposed on the video which appear at the time a user entered them, and which therefore reveal their immediate response toward a scene or an event.