ABSTRACT
Svanet'i (in Georgian) or Shvan (in Svan),1 which is situated in the northwest of Georgia, between the Central Caucasus range and the Colchian Plain, is an outstanding cultural landscape. The mountainous region in the valleys of the Enguri (Upper Svanet'i) and C'xeniscqali (Lower Svanet'i) appears rather isolated today. But this was not so in antiquity, when Svans controlled important pass-roads between the northern steppe and the Black Sea as 'rebellious barbarians' evoking the interest of Byzantine diplomacy during the Persian-Byzantine wars of the sixth century.2 Throughout the Middle Ages, Svanet'i maintained wideranging relations with the Georgian lowlands and the neighbouring mountainous regions, at a time when it was a more or less independent political unit among the Georgian kingdoms and principalities.3
