Georgi Nekhrizov

Project leader

Georgi Nekhrizov is an Associate Professor in archaeology at the Department of Interdisciplinary Research and Archaeological Map of Bulgaria of the National Archaeological Institute with Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He is the director of all archaeological campaigns on the Gluhite Kamani site since their beginning in 2008 until the present. His academic interests include the study of Thracian culture in all its aspects. He is a specialist on the problems of the megalithic monuments in Thrace. As a national administrator of the Archaeological Map of Bulgaria, he coordinates the collection and preservation of data for the archaeological sites in the entire country.

Julia Tzvetkova

Project Member

Julia Tzvetkova is an Associate Professor in Ancient history and Thracology at Sofia University. St. Kliment Ohridski, since 2010 she has been the deputy-director of the archaeological excavations at the site, and since 2018 – a co-director. Her research focuses on Thracian history and culture from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age (2nd-1st millennium BC), and the interactions with other classical communities of Greeks and Romans, historical geography of ancient Thrace, interdisciplinary and GIS applications in history and archaeology, Greek and Thracian numismatics.

0000-0002-0211-885X

Maya Vassileva

Project Member

Maya Vassileva is an Associate Professor in Ancient History at the New Bulgarian University. She was Co-Director of the “Rock-Cut Sanctuaries in the Eastern Rhodope Mountains: the Gluhite Kamani Cult Complex” Project during 2011-2012 and 2014-2015. Her studies deal with ancient history of Thrace, Phrygia and Anatolia, Thracian and Anatolian Archaeology, as well as with cultural interconnections between Balkan and Anatolian peoples in Antiquity.

57198189764

Lynn Roller

Project Member

Lynn Roller is Professor Emerita of Art History at the University of California, Davis.  She has been the Co-Director of the Gluhite Kamani Survey Project in 2011 and 2015, and a member of the Gordion Expedition sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania since 1979.  Her major research interests include Thracian-Phrygian contacts, Thracian and Phrygian cult practices, Thracian and Phrygian writing systems, and interactions between ancient Greece, the Thracian and Phrygian cultures.

38162848600

Nadezhda Kecheva

Project Member

Nadezhda Kecheva, PhD, is an assistant professor in archaeology at the Department of Interdisciplinary Research and Archaeological Map of Bulgaria of the National Archaeological Institute with Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In 2008 – 2011 she was part of the team excavating the site. She was a deputy-leader (2011) and a leader (2012) of the field surveys carried out in the region of the Gluhite Kamani rock complex. In 2015 she was a deputy-leader of the expedition which carried out a terrain data verification of airborne laser scanning (LiDAR) in the region. Her academic interests include non-destructive methods in archaeology, application of GIS in archaeology, development of the national archaeological information system “Archaeological Map of Bulgaria”, standardization and mapping of archaeological data and metadata to the established World and European standards.

0000-0002-0128-1129

Nataliya Ivanova

Project Member

Nataliya Ivanova, PhD, is an assistant professor at the National Archaeological Institute with Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In 2014 she was awarded PhD in Archaeology in the University of Nottingham, UK. Between 2013 and 2017 she was a deputy-director at the archaeological excavations of the Gluhite Kamani site. She has also participated in the field surveys carried out in the region. Her academic interests include production, processing and storage of food in the first millennium BC, agricultural tools and techniques, paleoenvironment and paleodiet, microbotanical studies – phytoliths and starch analyses.

0000-0002-1802-2051

Kamelia Marinova

Project Member

Kamelia Marinova, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Department of Mineralogy and Petrography of MGU “St. Ivan Rilski”. Her PhD thesis is focused on a mineralogical-petrographic study of artifacts from cult sites in the Eastern Rhodopes, including selected specimens from the Gluhite Kamani. Her scientific interests include research in the fields of geology, petrography, mineralogy, geoinformatics as well as the interdisciplinary field of geoarchaeology, where she is one of the few Bulgarian researchers.

Kamelia Marinova

Ivanka Hristova

Project Member

Ivanka Hristova, PhD, works as an archaeobotanist at the Environmental Archaeology Lab at Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå University, Sweden. Her research interests are focused on the investigation of human–plants interactions in the past, reconstruction of plant economy, palaeodiet, food processing and agricultural practices, as well as land use. Other spheres of interest are human impact on the environment, use of woodland resources, vegetation history and its development through time.

0000-0003-4899-1256