Like all the other national sites, Fasti Bulgaria, active since 2005, is
jointly managed by AIAC and a national institution, in this case the Sofia
University St. Kliment Ohridski. Currently, over 80% of the Bulgarian
archaeologists are cooperating and over 1030 Bulgarian archaeological sites are
published on Fasti Online, and each year 240 new bilingual excavation reports,
both in English and in Bulgarian, are posted. Thus, almost all Bulgarian sites
on Fasti Online have multiple
excavation reports, many of them for the entire period from 2004 to 2018,
without interruption. The Bulgarian sites that were published date from the
Paleolithic, the Neolithic and the Chalcolithic periods, the Bronze Age, the
Thracian period, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the First and the
Second Bulgarian Kingdoms and the Ottoman period, ranging from 1,600,000 BP to
the 18th century.
In fact, Fasti Bulgaria
was the second site that was launched after the Italian one and its success was
a driving force and stimulus for other countries in Southeastern and Eastern Europe to subsequently join the project. Thus,
since the Bulgarian sector on Fasti
Online was up and running and became well known to the international
audiences, Albania, Croatia, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia,
Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Ukraine joined the project, while recently Greece
also joined by integrating Archaeology in
Greece Online with the Fasti
platform.
The extraordinary wealth of sites under
excavation in Bulgaria makes it an ideal example of the uses of the Fasti in the rapid internet dissemination
of new archaeological research. A majority of the hits on the Bulgarian site
come from Europe and the U.S.,
as it is now recognized by British, American and European scholars as by far
the most important online academic resource in English on the ongoing exciting
archaeological discoveries in Bulgaria.
Fasti Bulgaria is a fine example of
how the site can be used to promote Bulgaria's rich and important
archaeology and, by making the results of Bulgaria’s heritage widely accessible
and visible, to attract international visitors and develop the heritage tourism
in the country. The site is permanently housed by the Institute for the Study
of Ancient Italy at the University of Texas at Austin, and it owes its
continued existence to a grant from the Classical Association, for which we are
very grateful.
Elizabeth Fentress, International
Association for Classical Archaeology (Scientific Director of the
Fasti Online project)
Nikola Theodossiev, Sofia
University St. Kliment Ohridski
