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The Azmak Mound in Southern Bulgaria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Georgi Georgiev
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Extract

The Azmak settlement mound has T a very favourable position: it is situated in the midst of a fertile plain, surrounded on three sides by marsh land, from which it takes its name, Azmak being the Bulgarian for marsh. It is 7.94 m. high, with a diameter at its base of 80 m.; it covers an area of 5,500 sq. m.

The excavations between 1960 and 1963 yielded no less than 10,000 finds, mainly from the Neolithic and Eneolithic periods. The thickness of the accumulated cultural levels was 7-5 m., of which 3 m. belonged to the Neolithic period and 4-5 m. to the Eneolithic and Bronze Ages. The 3 m. belonging to the Neolithic period consisted of six building levels, five of which can be attributed to the culture known as Karanovo I, and the sixth, much destroyed, to the culture known as Karanovo 111, especially as known from the Jassa Tepe I level at Plovdiv.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 39 , Issue 153 , March 1965 , pp. 6 - 8
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1965

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Footnotes

*

The tell or tepe of Azmak is situated 6 km. east of the town of Stara Zagora in south Bulgaria. It is the only settlement mound in Bulgaria, and indeed perhaps in the whole of the Balkan Peninsula, that has been completely investigated. The excavations, which took place between 1960 and 1963, were directed by Dr Georgi Iliev Georgiev, a research secretary of the Archaeological Institute and Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, who is already well known for his excavations at the Karanovo, Russe, and Dipsiz sites near Nova Zagora. The complete stratigraphical succession obtained at Azmak, and described in this article, throws much light on the life and culture of Bulgaria between the Vth and IIIrd millennia B.C., the period of the Neolithic and Eneolithic.

References

* Georgiev, G. I., ‘Kulturgruppen der Jungsteinund der Kupferzeit in der Ebene von Thrazien (Südbulgarien)’, in Soudský, B. and Pleslová, E. (eds.), L’Europe à la fin de l’âdge de la pierre (Prague, 1961), 65Google Scholar.