Before I begin, let me just say that there is still one last day to trump the finds from today. There has been tremendous progress within the weeks that I have been here, and I am tempted to come back next year just so I can continue to be apart of this significant model of historical relevance. The site of Djanavara was witness to a massive transition of world history that changed everything. The more we can extract and learn from this site, the more we can be able to comprehend the devastation and transitions that were a result of that era. Whether we realize it or not, the significance of what happened here on the eastern seaboard of Bulgaria reverberates in someway with us all. What more could one ask for then to be apart of the folk that took part in decoding this mystery.
We are nearing the end of this digging season. On Thursday morning we had officially arrived.
Per usual, we found ourselves at the excavation site nearly 10 minutes before 8am. There was a slight breeze and the temperature was somewhere around 74˚ Fahrenheit. It was absolutely blissful. The morning light was peering through the cypresses and pine trees and we were all eager to make these last couple of days the most archaeologically memorable. Since the end was now in sight, this was to time to begin discovering reliquaries and caverns hidden beneath the infamous limestone layer. This was the last chance to begin to discover the monk’s bones and the treasure troves just centimeters below the current pit levels. Now was the time to bring to light the hidden identity of the churches’ unknown patron saint and to provide new information to support the theory that this site, Djanavara, was more than a church or a monastic site, that it was truly a small fortified village slowly being surfaced again after over fifteen hundred years of darkness under the soils. As the July sun warmed the already exposed stones of the church walls, we all hoped to bring to light something that would make a great impact on the history of this site.
Aleksandar Minchev, the director of the excavations, arrived with his retinue shortly after 8:15am. He scurried to the ad hoc excavation camp and laid down a Bulgarian newspaper, obviously ecstatic about something. He immediately started to shout something in Bulgarian to the respected leaders of our crew. They picked up the newspaper and asked him, I think, questions about the news. Another excavation team working in Sozopol, just south of Varna, discovered the "burial site" of St. John the Baptist. This is huge news! Complete with a sarcophagus, relics, and plenty of Byzantine imperial documents to back up their find, they had made world news.
Now the pressure was on. Today we had surpass the Sozopol find… but that was not going to happen unless we really did find something miraculous. Like the bones of Jesus himself or something.
We had luck on our side. First, there was the excavation square that some others and I were to begin digging in which we thought contained a grave. Second, that morning some of our team members happened upon hardboiled eggs that had double yokes. I guess that is a sign of good luck. I did not know this, but I will accept it as ‘truth’ from now on. Third, it has been a tradition at the Djanavara site to discover the most amazing finds during the last couple of days.
We were all eager to begin the daily dig.
To my disappointment, I was split from my usual partner and put into another group that was not going to excavate the square that supposedly contained the grave. Instead, I was put into a square that was diagonally across from it. That did not help my curiosity. I found myself looking over in that direction every so often to see if that team had hit the skeleton. Incidentally, I guess I lucked out because they neither found a skeleton nor anything else.
My new square, ‘P8’, was about 1.3 meters (~4.5 ft) deep and 5X5 meters (~16ft length and widthwise), with a pile of Roman roof tiles and bricks right in the middle of it all. Our digging-neighbors to the south of us kept discovering 6th century coins and metal nails. We found nothing, which I thought was ridiculous because there was no more than 1 ft between their square and ours. There could have been no way in which all those monks would have dropped their change in only that part of the total room. Frustration ensued, and we worked harder. What really took the cake was when the site leaders wished to preserve the roof tiles and brick in the middle of our square. My team ended up, essentially, digging a deep and narrow trench. We are not exactly small and there is only so much room for two shovels and a pickaxe. We wondered why they neglected to take working photos and properly document the items. That way they could be removed and we could continue to level the soil floor so that we all could have ample room to work diligently. Sadly, the heaps of shards were to remain in the way.
In the midst of all this the Bulgarian National Television (BNT) crew arrived on our site. After the half hour break at 10:30am, I was tapped on the shoulder to speak about the site, my experience here thus far and to state why I had come here to begin with. No pressure, right? Wrong, it was nerve-racking to even think about what I was going to say. When it was time to talk, I naturally gave my educational background information and talked about the connection with this site and its significance during the 6th century, right before and during the barbarian invasions. Then, of course, I stuck in there the connection between that and the importance of Byzantine history, as a whole. The BNT people had no clue what I was saying, since they only spoke Bulgarian. I am assuming they will attain a translator to dub over what I said, in which case I hope I made sense. Not having rehearsed, I was a bit nervous. I felt like I was rambling a tiny bit near the end, but never mind that. I have officially made a documented impact here in some form.
As the day wore on P8 became deeper. We had to place the wheelbarrow on the ledge, 4.5ft above our ground level. That means we had to basically sling the dirt from our shovels into the wheelbarrow in semi-Olympian manner. About an hour before we left the site, I was mid sling with my load of dirt when my right shoulder ceased to participate any more. It popped and only the grip of my hand prevented my arm from falling to my side. I blew my shoulder. I let out a little “Aaargggg”. My yelp was quite contained though, so it does not deserve an exclamation point. Being a “typical man” I spent the rest of the day pretending like it was nothing. But I stuck to the tasks that did not require much from my right arm. I mostly used the pickaxe, but not bending my shoulder past a certain degree because otherwise it would give out on me.
It was a painful bus ride back.
It was a painful afternoon.
I had hoped to run my shoulder under cold water in my room when we returned. It turns out the city was doing water maintenance that day and our water would not come on until later that night. For a good number of hours I remained encrusted with dirt and sweat with a precarious right shoulder.
To take my mind off of it I joined a number of others to see a movie. I rode a packed bus to the mall where the cinema is. There were no seats and all the vertical handle bars were occupied for standers. I had no choice but to grin and bear the pain of lifting my arms up to grip the parallel bars that run along the canopy of the bus as it flew through the city to our destination.
I woke up around 4:30am this morning. The hotel had mistakenly dialed my room number for someone else’s wakeup call.
There is only one more day, after today, to find something incredible. It would be fun to come across something great and I honestly did not think we would. Still with high spirits, we set out the day working just hard as the day before. My shoulder felt a little better, but still not well enough to sling any dirt into the wheelbarrow. The pit was about 2 meters by now so slinging dirt was not an option for anyone, anymore. The wheelbarrow was simply too high up. We ended up adopting a system of filing up buckets and hoisting them to the top of the pit to be disposed of. After we lifted a few large stones and roman roof tiles we came across our first official unique find in the pit.
We found a skeleton.
We found a skeleton of a dog. The skull was partially intact and most of the bones, except for some large ones, were shattered. Obviously, the dog must have been caught amidst the crumbling building. The bones were very brittle and just about decomposed.
No sooner than moments later another magnificent find was unearthed across the site. In one of the dolia that I had previously been working in, my former partner, who was still working in that area, found a shard of pottery that had a signature on it. It was stamped with a running dog figure. According to John Hayes, a well-known expert on pottery types and archaeology, this particular pottery signature is unique to only one area in the world, Asia Minor. This further proves that whomever inhabited this church complex was more than likely from a heretical eastern sect. The mosaics within the church, the design of the Apse built within the walls of the church, and now this pottery piece all support this theory. Bit by bit the story of this church is coming together.
But my square, good old ‘P8’, was not done emptying its contents yet. Again, during the last hour of work for the day the metal detector picked up something strong just underneath the soil. What we found was the biggest and most comprehensible coin ever found on the site. On one face of the coin were the goddess Nike and the name of the place where it was minted, Sissa, Italy. There have been other coins found on the site but none of them are as clear as this one. The coin discoveries thus far have been composed of mostly small metal disks that are too tiny and rusted to make out anything of worth. Judging by the design of the face amongst other characteristics the director of the excavation determined that the coin dates from around the time of emperor Valens (328-378AD), who bolstered Roman military might in this region of the empire by making Marcianoplis the regional capital, briefly, when the Visigoths began to spill over the Danube into Roman territory. This, along with the bones and the pottery signature, was more than enough to satisfy my archaeological hunger for the season.
Today was an amazing day for discovery. More than ever, I welcome tomorrow.
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