Not Sharing the Sacra

The Caucasus is a landscape dotted with informal sacred places that stand in isolation from the hustle and bustle of daily life. Their sacrality is not uncontested, however, as a variety of religious movements have increasingly sought to ‘purify’ these places by classifying them as manifestations of heretical tendencies. Some of these places have, in the not so distant past at least, served as nodes of contact between groups who nominally adhere to different religions. In the highlands of Khevsureti, for example, the shrine of Qaqmatis-Jvari and the ruined shrine of Anatori close to Chechnya served as meeting points between