Telish-Lîga, North Bulgaria . The Late Copper Age Site

In 2002 most of our efforts were directed towards rescue excavation in Sadovec area, 7 km SE of Liga. The reason was to salvage information from a superb site yielding a long cultural sequence. Looters had recently started to dig at what turned out to be the first Eneolithic tell settlement in Northern Bulgaria . The site is known as Ezero, among locals. The looters had left three trenches, each reaching the sterile layer below. This meant that the main task was to clean these trenches and to make records of 4 metres of cultural debris. Six building horizons - or "settlements" - on top of each other were recorded in great detail.

The Ezero site, "squeezed" in between steep rocks.

The Ezero site itself is surrounded by high and nearly 90 degrees steep ranges or bluffs of lime-stone hills. In a narrow passage cut by the river Belilka, a tributary of the Vit, the locality remains almost unnoticeable. The settlement lies on a saddle-like lime hillock, measuring 65 x 40 m. The northern part of the hill is higher than the southern, and approximately 14 m high.

Due to the natural form of the hillock, all aeolithic sand, making up the occupation deposits, was accumulated in the southern part. The northern part remained uncovered by soil or vegetation and no traces of human activity had left any impact on its appearance. The hillock at its highest and most northern point is approximately 173 m above sea level. The range of hills around rises over the site by seven metres on the northern side and more than 15 m on a southern one.

Grain pithos, unburned but perfectly preserved, it was produced with the great care from whitish clay.

Due to the remoteness of the site, the conditions of preservation were exceptionally good. Only two of the recorded settlements were burned down, and the remaining was left for slow decomposition. Nevertheless, even in these layers where clay items were not exposed to fire, their state of preservation was remarkable. Among the most important finds was a burial of a woman, which was placed on her face in a pit measuring just 60 x 40 cm. This event happened at the very end of the Eneolithic. The fine state of preservation of the skeleton allowed Prof. Y.Yordanov, Sofia to make a facial reconstruction of an Eneolithic woman, the first for northern Bulgaria .

The grave of a woman was already partly disturbed by the looters when archaeologists visited the site for the first time.

The earliest occupation of the Ezero site is dated to the beginning of the Eneolithic, i.e. 5000 BC. At the end of the period the site expanded onto the edges of the northern range of hills (the site opposite Ezero which goes under the name of Kaleto, "fortress"). Apparently, at that time, the inhabitants have started to use a kind of drawbridge, for the distance which had to be overcome between the two heights, abruptly separated by a stream deep down, was less than 7 m, while it would take about a hour to walk the distance.

4 m deep profile held information on six Copper Age settlements.

Not long after the northern expansion, the Ezero site in the canyon was abandoned while habitation continued on the more accessible plateau. The Kaleto site is also heavily damaged by looters, who have even used excavating machinery for their purpose. Therefore, rescue work was also carried out here. It appeared that after the close of the Eneolithic, the settlement continued right into the Bronze Age, seemingly without any interruption or dramatic material changes. This makes Kaleto truly exceptional.

A trench across the earth-and-stone rampart.

Finally, another highly interesting structure investigated at the Kaleto site is a circular rampart, surrounding the site from the accessible side and ending at the steep edges of the plateau. This rampart was constructed with the help of two stone walls, and inner and an outer, with a compact layer of soil in between. The only finds found in connection with this structure were shards of the Late Bronze Age. No information on such structures exists earlier, thus adding to the exceptional work carried out during the three seasons of field-work.