After months of fight of progressive Bulgarian cultural leaders and members of local community of Karlovo valley situated in South Central Bulgaria, now we know more about the discoveries near Dubene. Unfortunately, the finds were displayed in the National Museum of History instead in Karlovo City Museum and we cannot hear about any cultural leader from Karlovo from the press-conference that only confirmed what we have been stated for several months in official letters and commentaries (no given access to Bulgarian newspaper like Duma):
First, Vassil Nikolov (the director of the Archaeological Institute with Museum, Sofia) and Bozhidar Dimitrov (the Director of the National Museum of History, Sofia) have personal careerist interests only in the discovery and the last what they think is about the Bulgarian archaeology and the cultural heritage.
Second, the sent on the site non-professional in the period and type of site is just a toy in the hands of both directors of Leading Bulgarian Cultural Institutions who is on the site with the mission to collect the finds mostly. Both directors obviously forgot their roles as supporting a young archaeologist, since they forgot to invite him on the Press-Conference of leading journalists. Or they were afraid that his non-professional knowledge (let me not to discuss the intellect) will scare all around while as directors they have to be believed. There is no excuse about ongoing excavations, since several times during this session the excavator went to Sofia to have brought the finds (presumably to the National Museum of History) while the Karlovo Museum of History is just abt 7 km from the site.
Let me remind once again that Dubene (Dabene) in a village in Karlovo Municipality but Vassil Nikolov consciously missed the most important fact of the information since in 7 km from the site is City Museum of History in Karlovo Town and the cultural rights are for the direct descendents of the ancient gold, respectively the community from the Upper Stryama valley. In addition, Vassil Nikolov not only sent a non-professional on the excavations, but misinformed the journalists, which seems to be his typical social behavior. In another newspaper was written that according to Vassil Nikolov the archaeologists were on the site before the treasure-hunters, but as a matter of fact the site was shown by local people who first unearthed some golden objects and went with them to the Archaeological Museum in Sofia, since usually the small museums do not have funds for archaeological finds (see also academic opinion and his abstract where he had hidden the locality of the discovery).
The cemetery of Dubene dates generally from the third millennium cal BCE. According to rumors, there are fragments of pointed bottom- cups dated from later third millennium cal BCE but we don’t know when the cemetery was founded. The village to which the cemetery belonged has been excavated since 1992. It dates from Early Bronze I-III and is one of the earliest villages from Bronze Age founded in Thrace abt 3400 cal BCE. However, the ritual of cremation was distributed from Central Europe and for now Dubene-Cemetery is the only cemetery far west in the Balkans.
According to ABC news, it was said by Vassil Nikolov that "The buried man was cremated, and then an earth mound was piled over his ashes and his riches, suggesting that he was part of these people's social elite". First, the mounds near Dubene are not only earth, but earth and stone. Second, as far as I know there is no evidence for cremation in situ for the time being. Third, since there is no professional on the site, so we possibly will never know what had been really discovered. The preliminary information only confirmed our care about the non-professional excavations for which the Archaeological Institute had been repeatedly informed.
I wish ABC will be also interested in the anthropology of excavation and of the golden finds and their further destiny and help the community of Karlovo valley to have the finds back where they were treasured thousand years ago.
To support the finds to be returned in their natural cultural contexts and curated by the city Museum of History in Karlovo, e-mail to karlovogoldback@iianthropology.org |
![[History]](http://us.yimg.com/i/ligans/cb/smtdih.gif)
