An article from ArchaeoNews is as follows:
“Ancient Bulgarian settlement destroyed by bulldozers”
An archaeological site in Bulgaria, including remnants of a village said to date back 8000 years, has been destroyed by bulldozers, allegedly the work of a construction company building part of a new road from Bulgaria to Greece. A special commission from the Ministry of Culture is inspecting the damage to the site, near Momchilgrad, and police are investigating.
Zharin Velichkov, chief inspector of the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture said that the site had individual layers dating back thousands of years, believed to reach back as far as 6000 BCE. He said that he could not say who had committed the destruction but it was most likely the company that had been carrying out work in the area.
The construction company had been given accurate maps of the area, with archaeological sites marked. The mound of the site, which also included a medieval church, were a few hundred metres from the planned road to Greece. Archaeologists are now trying to rescue anything remaining after the bulldozing.
Zharin Velichkov, chief inspector of the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture said that the site had individual layers dating back thousands of years, believed to reach back as far as 6000 BCE. He said that he could not say who had committed the destruction but it was most likely the company that had been carrying out work in the area.
The construction company had been given accurate maps of the area, with archaeological sites marked. The mound of the site, which also included a medieval church, were a few hundred metres from the planned road to Greece. Archaeologists are now trying to rescue anything remaining after the bulldozing.
This article brings to light the issues surrounding construction around archaeological sites. The article states that the construction company was given maps of the area in order to avoid doing damage to the surrounding sites. One would think that this sort of information would have been enough to keep the company from damaging the archaeological sites. I feel that this information should have been enough for the construction company, but it brings up the idea that maybe more efforts and supervision have to be put towards all construction sites close to archaeological sites. The archaeological sites should be protected and respected by any and all, and an instance such as this may be a sign that construction sites and companies need to be more informed about the damaging effects that they can have on precious archaeology, and that maybe there needs to be something set up in order to supervise these sites more efficiently.
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