Here is a story (though "you had to be there", even though that is a trite phrase).

A sun-baked small hill rising about five metres (fifteen feet) above the surrounding cultivated field.
About ten people squatting or sitting on the ground and slowly and carefully clearing soil with small tools or their hands.
At first, there is just the ordinary surface of the soil.
Then the rim of a little pot emerges, seeing the light of day again after thousands of years.
As luck would have it, this one is even unbroken.

First the soil around it is completely cleared, eventually with brushes.
It is photographed in situ.
Its precise location is measured with a total station.
Then it is lifted (manually) and placed in a plastic bag with a piece of paper recording field data.
In the afternoon it is washed and only then it becomes quite clear whether it is decorated.
Some are, some aren't.
Some ornaments are just beautiful (think of modern abstract art).
Then the artefact is photographed again and measured.
The data is recorded in the field journal.
In the usual case when it is found broken, it is restored by gluing the pieces together, possibly filling in for missing ones.
A sketch is drawn by hand.
Eventually, it belongs in a local museum.

Such a hill is a settlement mound (also known as a tel or a tell).
It comes into existence when multiple settlements are built one after another in the same place in the course of centuries.
Rebuilding was necessary, because mud houses aren't very durable and, alas, fires happened as well.
The debris wasn't removed, just pressed into the ground and new houses were built on top of that.

This particular site is Kozareva Mogila, very near the west Black Sea coast (north of the city of Burgas, Bulgaria).
It was inhabited in the Fifth Millennium during the Eneolithic (also known as the Chalcolithic and the Copper Age).
This was the time of the earliest metallurgy (thermal extraction of metal from ore, at first copper).
Copper artefacts are rare, likely because they were valuable and rarely abandoned.
They vary from tools like axes, adzes, and awls to decorations like beads, rings, and bracelets.

(Troy is a famous settlement mound, from a much later time.)

#Archaeology
#BalkanArchaeology
#BalkanPeninsula
#BalkanPrehistory
#Balkans
#Chalcolithic
#CopperAge
#Eneolithic
#HamangiaCulture
#JoyOfDiscovery
#KozarevaMogila
#Prehistory
#SettlementMound
#VarnaCulture

@dougmerritt @AmenZwa @rl_dane @raven667