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The three mounds located at the mortuary site of Boyanovo on a limestone outcrop above the Thracian Plain were surveyed by the Tundzha Regional Archaeology Project (TRAP) in 2009. It is located at the convergence of the southeastern Balkans and the Eurasian steppe and border-steppe regions. Across these geographical regions and beyond, the Bronze Age was a period of flux, with a tendency toward increased mobility for portions of communities or entire groups. The increasing economic dependence of humans upon their domestic animals in the Bronze Age and subsequent Iron Age is reflected in the archaeological evidence for a shift toward domesticated animal remains over wild or agricultural resources. The location, chronology, and burial context of the human remains recovered from the mortuary site of Boyanovo link these individuals with contemporary pastoral trends. In this study, stable isotope analysis of collagen extracted from the bones of 14 individuals is applied to investigate dietary patterns within the Boyanovo population. Data from this study are compared to other archaeological communities with palaeodietary habits including diets high in freshwater fish, terrestrial domesticates (plants and animals), and millet. This analysis elucidates a critical aspect of daily life, subsistence, complementing the mortuary information available from the archaeology of the site. The results indicate that humans interred at Boyanovo relied upon terrestrial fauna for their dietary protein. Carbon stable isotope values of the population reflect a mixed C3-C4 diet, either from regular, direct consumption of C4 plants (especially millet) or the frequent consumption of animals grazed or foddered on a high-C4 diet.

This chapter presents the results of spatial analysis conducted on a surface survey data from the Tundzha Regional Archaeology Project (TRAP) in the Kazanlak Valley. It characterises the dynamics of settlement patternsin the valley and reviews factors contributing to them. Diachronic variation in the spatial distribution of human activities in the Kazanlak Valley indicates that both natural and social drivers shaped the locational preferences of past communities within this intermontane landscape. In most periods, site distributions depart from spatial randomness. In the long term, site numbers periodically grow and decline, pointing to changing demographic trends and habitation preferences. Prehistoric settlement patterns seem governed by environmental and economic factors, while socio-political circumstances dominate historical periods. Site dispersal and aggregation are correlated with shifts of political autonomy from local communities to supra-regional polities and vice versa. Given the limitations of survey data and the diachronic approach, the analysis provides a bird's-eye view of developments in Kazanlak. These results provide context for future explorations of specific periods and sites at a finer scale using other approaches.

This Final Report is the principal outcome of Tundzha Regional Archaeology Project (TRAP) fieldwork conducted between 2009 and 2011, as well as associated studies that continued through 2015. Research focused on two study areas: the Kazanlak Valley and the Thracian Plain south of Yambol. TRAP was the first international, multidisciplinary, diachronic landscape archaeology project of its kind in Bulgaria. This chapter contextualises TRAP's research program by telling the story of the project, including both successes and challenges. Here, we recount how the diverse investigators came to undertake a large-scale field project in Bulgaria, how the study areas and research approaches were selected, and how project objectives evolved. We also describe how the project was structured and operated. Project leaders strove to use best practices from landscape archaeology as it is practiced elsewhere in the Mediterranean, and introduced new digital approaches to field recording. Project aims ranged from the documentation of archaeological heritage for cultural heritage management to the investigation of settlement patterns and their evolution in historical and environmental context. Key objectives were met. The project team, including over 100 students, volunteers, and other participants, covered over 100 sq km in pedestrian survey, and conducted trial excavations, palaeoenvironmental research, and related investigations over five field seasons. Key outcomes include a 30,000-year palaeoecological record and an inventory of over 100 flat sites and 800 burial mounds, allowing a re-evaluation of long-term changes in subsistence strategies and social organisation in Thrace.

This chapter discusses the results of spatial analysis conducted on surface survey data from the Yambol study areas of the Tundzha Regional Archaeology Project (TRAP). In the rolling landscape of the Middle Tundzha River watershed, tributary valleys serve as zones of settlement, contributing to east-west settlement systems. Elevated ridges between the tributary valleys host mortuary landscapes. These linear systems pose a challenge to quantified assessment of aggregation and dispersal due to their single dimension, and so this study focuses on rates of growth, site spacing, and hierarchy. Given the ubiquitous presence of productive soils in the tributary valleys and the lack of topographic obstacles, economic and social factors emerge as the main drivers of settlement. Historical settlement dynamics change in response to internal and external socio-economic stimuli. An Early Iron Age rise in site counts is similar to that seen in Kazanlak. After the number of sites decline in the Late Iron Age, the Roman period sees the apex of settlement. Functional differentiation is attested in stratified urban and rural sites, while surface artefacts signal that local communities engaged in crafts and commerce. After Roman-era growth abates, settlements decline during the Late Antique and Early Byzantine period. Recovery during the Mediaeval period sees a different settlement pattern established, where only a few permanent sites sit amidst an agricultural hinterland. During the Ottoman periodhabitations relocate to their modern placement outside of the study areas.

Functional ambiguity and chronological coarseness are well-known limitations of survey data. These issues contribute to the problem of contemporaneity and hinder synchronic settlement analysis. In this chapter, the impact of functional and temporal uncertainty in the Kazanlak dataset produced by the Tundzha Regional Archaeology Project (TRAP) is explored. Four datasets are derived from the Kazanlak surface survey data by excluding uncertainty along two axes, functional and chronological. These datasets are then subjected to Dewar's probabilistic model to estimate the number of contemporary settlements per period. The number of contemporaneously occupied sites in six chronological periods between the Late Bronze Age and Early Byzantine period (1600 BC–AD 1000) are estimated. Dewar's model indicates that occupation span of sites varied over time. Of particular interest is the dominance of short-term sites during the Late Iron Age, pointing to instability in the Kazanlak Valley, later replaced with stability and settlement growth during the Roman period. This assessment further reveals that neither chronological nor functional uncertainty has a significant impact on the analysis of settlement dynamics. The subset of chronologically certain sites produces slightly higher estimates of contemporary settlements and longer estimates of average duration, but the differences remain within one standard deviation.

Excavations during autumn of 2010 at the fortified hilltop settlement of Dodoparon complemented the Tundzha Regional Archaeology Project (TRAP) survey campaign in the Yambol province. Three trenches provided information about the third to sixth century AD at this regional centre. Thick fortification walls enclosing 4 ha revealed the defensive character of the site, while the presence of slag indicated metal processing. A depot of 55 vessels found inside a small, centrally located structure attest to the storage of consumption-ready foodstuffs. A variety of metal finds, including a coin hoard hidden in the storage structure, implied a rushed abandonment of the site at the end of the sixth century AD, consistent with historical records of settlement evolution in the Middle Tundzha River catchment. Archaeobotanical results from the site provided evidence for agriculture and diet in the Roman period, identifying cereal grains, legumes, fodder, and weeds. Of interest was the preponderance of millet, which corroborates written evidence concerning the typical diet in ancient Thrace, and is consistent with stable isotope analysis of skeletal remains from Boyanovo presented in Chapter 17.