Note: This article is mostly based on my work for David O'Shea, a journalist from the Dateline current affairs program of the Australian SBS TV, who worked on a documentary on treasure hunting in Bulgaria in June 2009; on this project we were aided by Bulgarian archaeologist Ventsislav Gergov.
Premise, i.e. Prelude to the Tragedy
An ordinary field trip back in high school to an archaeological site in Northern Bulgaria left a very lasting memory in my mind. It was just one simple thing but it absolutely astonished me: the archaeologist accompanying my class would simply lean, pick up seemingly random objects off the ground, and would say, "Roman tile - 2nd century AD", or "Byzantine vessel - 5-6th century"; or "Bulgarian ceramics - First Bulgarian State"...
He would just date back to some historical period items lying right there on the surface without having to do any digging whatsoever... And the archaeology site that my class visited turned to be a whole bunch of ancient and medieval sites located within an area of 1-2 square kilometers...
To put it briefly, many people - including most Bulgarians - do not realize that all of Bulgaria's territory is literally dotted with archaeological objects from all time periods. Any single rock you pick up from the ground in Bulgaria often would turn out to have a several-thousand-year history of human interaction!
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