Venue
The event will be held in the conference room of the Regional History Museum of Sofia. The venue is located inside the big glass dome of the “Independence square”, connecting the presidential building and the former Parliament building at the “Serdica” subway station. The glass dome is home to the archaeological remains of the Roman city of Serdica, which are open to the public. It can be accessed both from the subway entrance at the side of the presidential building or from the other side, which connects the Palace of Justice and St. Nedelya Church . There will be signs to guide you at the two entrances.
Keynote speakers
"In small bones forgotten": fish, rodents, and the potential of seemingly insignificant remains to address key historical issues
Archaeologists are familiar with the idea of writing history from the forgotten residues of day-to-day life - none more so than zooarchaeologists, whose work overwhelmingly involves the analysis of individually unremarkable items of refuse. In this talk I want to highlight the potential of some of the smallest and most seemingky esoteric remains of all - fish and rodent bones - to address major historical issues at regional and even continental scales. I will do so through a series of examples drawing on published work - my own and colleagues' - and on results from the ongoing RATTUS project. A recurring theme is that even remains found in very small numbers at a given site can tell important stories when synthesised at a larger scale.
Birds and people in Medieval Bulgaria
(Review of the subfossil record of birds during the First and Second Bulgarian Empires)
For the first time, the numerous scattered data on birds (wild and domestic) have been collected based on their medieval bone remains discovered on the modern territory of the Republic of Bulgaria. The collected information is about a total of 38 medieval settlements from the time of the First and Second Bulgarian Empires. Among the settlements studied are both the two medieval Bulgarian capitals (Pliska and Veliki Preslav), as well as other cities, smaller settlements, military fortresses, monasteries and inhabited caves. The data refer to a total of 48 species of wild birds and 6 forms of domestic birds from 9 avian orders: Accipitriformes, Anseriformes, Columbiformes, Falconiformes, Galliformes, Gruiformes, Otidiformes, Passeriformes and Strigiformes. The established composition of wild birds amounts over one tenth (to 11.5%) of the modern avifauna in the country. Five of the established species (10.4 %) have disappeared from the modern nesting avifauna of the country - the Bearded vulture, the Great bustard, the Little bustard, the Gray crane and the Peregrine falcon. (The latter two species have reappeared as nesters in the past few years.)
First Bulgarian Empire (681 - 1018): Number of investigated settlements with found remains of birds in them - 23. Period covered – 5 centuries (7th to 11th c.). Found in total: at least 44 species/forms of birds, of which 39 species of wild birds and 5 forms of poultry. Second Bulgarian Empire (1185 - 1396): Number of investigated settlements with found remains of birds in them - 15. Period covered – 3 centuries (12th to 14th c.).
The groups of raptors, water, woodland, openland and synanthropic birds were analyzed separately. The conclusion was made that during the two periods of the Middle Ages, birds had an important role in the material (? and spiritual) life of the population of the Bulgarian lands.
Gallery
Coming soon...