2nd March 2012, 02:50 PM
Cigarettes are cheap in Bulgaria and most Bulgarian archaeologists I worked with smoked...... I also knew a Bulgarian archaeologist just like the guy in the picture who would go around with a metal detector and a pick digging up anywhere he got a 'ping' - unless you told him (sternly) not to.
'Soft deposits' don't have much value in the way that Bulgarian archaeologists work and (apart from our team) I never saw a single project using stratigraphic recording. So this guy would not be feeling any kind of guilt in pulling finds from the soft stuff without recording. We were told on a number of occasions that the Bulgarian archaeologists could not understand out attention to the minutiae of recording. That said. they have some fantastic sites with monumental Roman ruins that match many sites in Turkey and Asia Minor for size and extent. So ignoring the soft stuff may come from an attitude influenced by an abundance of riches......
'Soft deposits' don't have much value in the way that Bulgarian archaeologists work and (apart from our team) I never saw a single project using stratigraphic recording. So this guy would not be feeling any kind of guilt in pulling finds from the soft stuff without recording. We were told on a number of occasions that the Bulgarian archaeologists could not understand out attention to the minutiae of recording. That said. they have some fantastic sites with monumental Roman ruins that match many sites in Turkey and Asia Minor for size and extent. So ignoring the soft stuff may come from an attitude influenced by an abundance of riches......
With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...