Bozidar Dimitrov (the present director of the National Museum of History, Sofia) claims that most of the finds that come to be curated in National Historic Museum Sofia, Bulgaria, are donations or confiscated on the Bulgarian borders without known place of origin! This is according to the Bulgarian law! But lately Bozidar Dimitrov has displayed not donations and confiscated finds! He displays rare antique finds collected by teams partially sponsored by National Museum, during the excavations in different places in Bulgaria. The early Bronze gold objects from Dubene, Karlovo Municipality and the finds from Zlatintsa, Yambol are the most recent.
By the way, we had to fight several months almost to death at least to learn what had been discovered near Dubene. Now we know a little bit! But instead of all finds to be returned to the Museum of History in Karlovo, they had been displayed in the National Museum of History in Sofia. The rumor is Bozhidar Dimitrov has been trying to become a second ministry of culture. And probably it is the truth, but at the expenses of ancient history and the Bulgarian archaeological heritage, as well as at the expenses of the professional excavation of the cemetery since such important site has been excavated by non-professional in excavating prehistoric cemeteries. The story is funny, since the scenario-makers all the time change it – one of the main scenario-makers and actors of the story, Vassil Nikolov (the Director of Archaeological Institute with Museum) is usually behind the stage but most recently has occurred even as a “scientific team-leader” being probably no more than three - four times on the excavations. According to the scenario, Bozhidar Dimitrov and Vassil Nikolov granted “a young archaeologist” to excavate such important site, but it looks not very serious and truthful even to them, so Vassil Nikolov was named lately even a “scientific team-leader”. The truth is in Archaeological Institute there is a Section of Thracian Archaeology that includes specialists in Early Bronze Age cemeteries but as a director, Vassil Nikolov put his name behind the excavations (as a “consultant”) for his own benefit and not to empower other employee of Archaeological Institute. Such discovery in so rare in Bulgarian Prehistory! A specialist could become even world famous (but a specialist and not an archaeologist with diploma). The arrogance of Vassil Nikolov went so far that he had hidden the information about the discovery even in the abstract sent by him for a lecture in the USA writing about “Northern Thrace”, just because the host was the excavator of the village of that cemetery and logically had the cultural rights at least to know first about the discovery if has no opportunity for own excavations.
There is only one cultural place for the newly discovered find from Dubene – the City Museum of History, Karlovo. In our post-modern word of globalization and enculturation, we don’t need a special law to regulate such obvious for any thinking person reality. In Karlovo museum are all finds from the village to which the cemetery belong, the cemetery objects will be in its natural cultural context and last but not least, the finds belong to the descendents of the cemetery – the population of the Karlovo valley (L.N.). |
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