Answer: It is the site of the colonia at Archar near Vidin in NW Bulgaria. This is the place whence apparently (by his own admission) came the artefacts and coins being sold by ebay dealers like Empire Danny and his business contacts. They have (had) almost a metric tonne of artefacts obtained by "excavation" (sic) ten years ago. You can see the "excavation' trenches dug with bulldozers to take the topsoil off so metal detectors can penetrate the archaeological layers quite clearly. The way to stop this kind of damage is for responsible collectors to stop buying archaeologcal artefacts witout ensuring (by means of verifiable documented provenance) that they did not come from robber-digging like this.
2 comments:
That's easy Paul--it's Colonia Ulpia Traiana Ratiaria in northwestern Bulgaria. I spent some time there recently with my mafia buddies hoiking coins from the site for my collection of serried-rowed geegaws. At the moment they're piled up in a huge contextless heap on my dining room table just waiting to be fondled. Whoops--fondling time--gotta run.
Voz Earl
QED. It is exactly that kind of flippancy on the part of the collectors of this type of stuff which lies behind the looting and the illegal traffic in such items.
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