Bulgarian archaeology. Ideology, sociopolitics and the exotic, Douglass W. Bailey

De-exoticising Bulgarian archaeology

Bulgarian archaeology has remained an exotic species, isolated, in the main, from contemporary developments in archaeological practice. Exoticism rests on Bulgarian archaeology's position as an ideology, on its auto-marginalisation and on its vision of the past as a romantic object. The future of the discipline both as a legitimate academic discipline and as a potential nexus for the development of a civil society will only be assured if the atmosphere and restrictions inherent in these exoticisms are lifted. Success in de-exoticising Bulgarian archaeology relies equally upon internal action of the discipline as with external collaboration and commitment.
 

Internal action

Internally, de-exoticisation requires a move away from the romantic approach to the past, a recognition by the majority of archaeological practitioners of the power they possess to help construct a civil society, and a commitment by archaeologists to build their own archaeology without recourse to the implementation of pre-packaged schools of thought or bodies of practices.

In rejecting the romantic vision of the past, Bulgarian archaeology needs to turn to investigate and understand human behaviour and belief in a credibly scientific fashion. Perceptions of brilliant periods of past technological achieve-ments (e.g. the earliest appearance of Anatomically Modern Humans or the first use of gold) need to be replaced with more complex and valuable considerations of human behaviour (e.g. what were the cognitive abilities which enabled Anatom-ically Modern Humans to outlast Neanderthals?; what, if any, inherent physical characteristics of materials such as gold and copper made them obvious media for expressing personal identity?). Indeed, the falsely inflated valuation of 'earliest' and 'first' will collapse once they are no longer employed as artefacts in glorification of a past. Internally, culture history must be recognised as bankrupt and the pursuit of patterns in human behaviour and cognition must be engaged without delay.

Unlike much in Bulgaria since 1989, archaeology has not been affected by import. It stands outside the sphere of disciplines (economics. sociology, law) and activities (banking, insurance, investment) which have been injected via the syringe of Western funders and foundations. Neither history nor archaeology are the subjects which new programmes of foreign funding bodies have targeted most actively. Internally, the new, independent universities and institutes which have recently arisen do offer archaeology (indeed the New Bulgarian University has an Archaeology department with its own publication series). However, the courses most popular among students (and thus among parents, I presume) are not in the historical sciences. The popular courses are in business studies, political science, law.

Thus, one could argue that the marginalisation of archaeology both by the explosion of post-1989 foreign funders and by newly created internal is a negative consequence of the 1989 changes. On the other hand, and perhaps less obviously, the marginalisation of archaeology has kept the discipline clear of association with potential sources of negative images (e.g. the scandals over profit-making in the privatised utilities). Marginalisation has thus kept archaeology clean of the flood of changes, aspects of which many Bulgarians find unacceptable, catastrophic and of foreign influence (the staggering increase in the crime rate is a good example).

The final internal ingredient in the de-exoticisation of Bulgarian archaeology concerns the nature of the archaeological school(s) into which it invests effort or looks for advice. It is dear that the most disastrous approach which could be followed is a relativist one. In the first place, relativism fosters and reinforces the exotic (via its inherent condescension). It does this by accepting alternative traditions, and their goals and methods, on their own terms without reference to external standards. Perhaps much more importantly in the light of Bulgaria's history of ethnic struggle and authoritarian disregard for basic human rights, a relativist approach to the past would be an ethnic catastrophe. Chernykh has emphasised this point better than I have any ability or right to. In discussing the emergence of archaeological and historical consciousnesses of previously colonised people and the frequent contemporary emergence of long traditions of ethnic prejudices, he alerts us to the dangers of being fuzzy-headed, of uncritically romanticising formerly colonised peoples, or of uncritically facilitating their empowerment by supporting their often questionable "readings" of their own pasts.... Little fascists eager to distort their pasts to further their own, often violent, political ends are capable of sprouting up like weeds everywhere, and one must recognise them for what they are and not excuse them away on the basis of some slippery relativist standard. (Chernykh 1995: 148) [15]
 

External action

In parallel to the internal development of Bulgarian archaeology, the task of de-exoticisation must engage people and policies outside Bulgaria. At the heart of the external development is the recognition that archaeology defined in terms of modern nation-states is futile. While the recent relationship between Bulgarian and foreign archaeologists and institutions has been tightly controlled and at times strained, earlier periods in the discipline's history reflect an easier, more open relationship. [16]

The earliest developments in Bulgarian archaeology benefited from foreign influence. The Skorpil brothers (Karel, Hermengild and Vladimir) were Czechoslovaks working in Bulgaria during the creation of the new nation-state at the end of the nineteenth century. They collected information about a range of archaeological topics from all regions of the country and published a substantial number of papers and books. [17]  This early period also included the excavations by the French archaeologists Jerome, Seure and Degrand. Indeed, many of the early archaeologists working in Bulgaria had received their training in Austria or France. Raphail Popov and Gavril Katsarov were both trained abroad. Bogdan Filov was German educated. Indeed, one could argue that the very origins of Bulgarian archaeology, including the founding of the Archaeological Institute by Boris III (who had been born in Bulgaria as the son of the Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha when the latter was King of Bulgaria), was heavily influenced by western and central European traditions and individuals. More striking, perhaps, is the work of the American, James Gaul, who travelled widely in the country before World War II. His book The Neolithic in Bulgaria (Gaul 1948) was published posthumously and stood, until very recently (Todorova and Vajsov 1994), as the only synthetic monograph on the Neolithic in Bulgaria. The British archaeologist, Dorothy Garrod, carried out work on the Palaeolithic site Bacho Kiro in 1938 (Garrod 1939), work continued by a Polish-Bulgarian team from 1971-5 (Kozlowski 1982).

While a substantial proportion of post-1944 projects involved partners from the former Warsaw Pact countries, collaboration in more recent times has included major projects involving west European, American and Japanese archae-ologists. After 1976 international excavations were encouraged on the initiative of BAN and the Ministry of Culture, with teams from western Europe and Japan invited to take part (Velkov 1993). [18]

In light of the internal opposition to foreign influence, the extent of the inter-national collaboration which has occurred over the past fifty years (and beyond) must be recognised for the achievement which it represents. This becomes especially clear when viewed against the official line delivered to archaeologists from the Party ideologues in the 1950s and 1960s. This held that the major goals of Bulgarian archaeology were to assist in the struggle towards the final victory against the capitalist world (Arkheologiya 1963: 2; Dimitrov 1955: 8), to criticise the Western bourgeois archaeologists (ibid.: 5) and to fight against alien influences (ibid.: 5). Indeed, according to Party dictate, archaeologists were at the front line of the 'gigantic struggle of peace-loving people against the Anglo-American monopolists, the war-mongers of the World War' (ibid.: 8). Despite the move away from the xenophobic nationalism displayed in the Party-directed statements and the recent expansion of international collaboration, it remains illegal for a foreign national to have his or her name on a permit for excavation in Bulgaria.

More telling perhaps is the almost complete absence of Bulgarian archaeolo-gists working on projects in other countries. The recent work of a team of Palaeolithic archaeologists in Vietnam, led by Nikolai Sirakov, is a notable exception. A major component of the de-exoticisation of Bulgarian archaeology is the practical integration of Bulgarian archaeologists into field projects in other archaeological traditions. Integration into the fieldwork of non-Bulgarian traditions requires an expansion of the discipline from its current blinkered perspective as a national archaeology (only concerned with traces of the past as they relate to the territory within the modern borders of the nation-state) to a broader perspective which is not concerned with traces of ethnic originality of primacy, but which searches for patterns of human behaviour, regardless of border, political boundary or territory. Such an expansion could begin in the classroom and in the editor's office with courses and publications on the archae-ology of pan-European regions and beyond. All this requires investment and contribution (in the hard reality of publications) from outside Bulgaria.

Each of these proposals circle around the character of the role best played by foreign archaeologists in the praxis and future of Bulgarian archaeology. One alternative would be to take up a passive, hands-off position. This is the role of the relativist. It accepts Bulgarian archaeology as a self-contained and self-regulating entity. This position is unacceptable, dangerous and reckless. The preferred alternative is that foreign archaeologists roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty.

The task to be taken in hand is the removal of the false distinction which has been erected over the past century-and-a-half and which nominates Bulgarian archaeology as the exotic other, best left to its own devices. [19] The alternative, preferred in this essay as an example, is to treat colleagues as peers and offer them the respect of critical comment on their work, their methods and the social consequences of their doctrines. To do otherwise is to abrogate any responsibility for the impact which archaeology has on the reality of modern existence in Bulgaria or in any place that archaeology is practised. The time to accept that responsibility is now when, as a discipline, Bulgarian archaeology drifts without proper financial ballast, having been orphaned from a long-exploitative family.
 

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to many Bulgarian archaeologists at the Archaeological Institute in Sofia and in the regional museums who had the patience to speak with me about the condition and history of Bulgarian archaeology. Critical comments by the editor and Alasdair Whittle helped me to refine my thinking about this topic. The opinions expressed in this essay remain my own.
 

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15. Kohl and Tsetskhladze make the same point in their consideration of nationalism in the archaeology of the Caucasus (Kohl and Tsetskliladze 1995: 168).

16. As an example, see the recent scandal over the Bulgarian expulsion of a US archaeologist under trumped up charges of spying (Bailey 1995; Steele 1995; THES 1995).

17. Between the 1880s and the early 1940s the Skorpils produced over a hundred works in Bulgarian, Russian, German and Czech.

18. Collaborative projects included Italian work at Ratiaria, British work at Nicopolis ad Istrum, Austrian work at Karanovo, German work at Drama, French work at Kovachevo and Dutch and Japanese work at Dyadovo.

19. It is this attitude of relativist abandonment that has much to answer for in the abuses of archaeology and archaeological data in the ethnic tragedies of the former Yugoslavia. Colin Renfrew has made this point in his keynote address to the inaugural meeting of the European Archaeological Association in 1994 in Ljubljana. (Renfrew 1994).