Bulgaria - Kovačevo

The emergence of the Neolithic in the Balkans

The scientific programme of this expedition is concerned with the study of the Kovacevo site, which dates back to the earliest Balkan Neolithic period (end of the 7th and first half of the 6th millennium BC) and is located in the Struma valley (south-western Bulgaria), in a key region from the perspective of neolithisation routes and processes in south-east Europe. No other site from this period has been identified in the surrounding area within a radius of 80 to 200 kilometres and particularly not in the whole of northern Greece (eastern Macedonia and Thrace). The Kovacevo site was discovered at the beginning of the 1980s during a series of field surveys. Two soundings (nos. 1 and 2) were conducted in 1981 under L. Perniceva, which revealed the stratigraphy of the site dating principally to the Early Neolithic. The Franco-Bulgarian Kovacevo excavations have been ongoing since 1986 according to an agreement signed by the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research), the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture. Since 1986, excavation and study campaigns have been carried out annually, each lasting about two months. Fieldwork has now been completed, and the team is currently focusing on the monographic publication of findings.

^{Online: 02.23.09}