The British archaeological expedition to the ancient emporium at Vetren-Pistiros, central Bulgaria

Project start date: 1999-05

Project end date: 2009-08

The project consists of preliminary geophysical prospection (1999-2001), a programme of limited excavation (30 sq metres), accompanied by faunal, organic, and metallurgical analyses (1999-2008), whose aim is to create a continuous, dated sequence of activities at the late Iron Age river port at Adjiyska Vodenitsa, near Vetren, plausibly identified with ancient Pistiros. This abandoned site, inundated by the River Maritsa in the second century BCE, provides a unique opportunity to study the symptoms of economic and cultural exchange between southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean at a time when written documents and coined money were becoming adopted to build institutional mechanisms linking parties from different states and customary traditions of transaction. The project provides a full monograph, as well as an electronic archive, of the British team's contribution to work conducted at the only systematically investigated complex settlement in the east Balkans from the pre-Roman Iron Age (5th - 2nd centuries BCE). Since 1988, approximately half of a 1.5ha terrace above the flood plain has been excavated by an international team. The Bulgarian and Czech teams have focused on excavating structures either side of the main east-west road, perpendicular to a substantial masonry gateway and fortification wall. The British team has concentrated on two areas, respectively north and south of the former, as well as investigating an area covering 8ha. beyond the terrace. The aim is to provide broader and more nuanced spatial and contextual information, alongside the preliminary data on architecture and finds published in two monographs (1996, 2002). production of compressed JPEG files from uncompressed TIFF files for web dissemination