September 18, 2008
Georgi Kitov, Who Excavated Thrace, Dies at 65
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Georgi Kitov, a Bulgarian archaeologist whose discoveries helped illuminate the culture of ancient Thrace, but whose methods — especially using bulldozers and backhoes — appalled his more meticulous colleagues, died Sunday in Starosel, Bulgaria. He was 65.
The cause was a heart attack, said the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Bulgarian state news agency reported.
Mr. Kitov gained fame for making one sensational discovery after another about the ancient people of Thrace and helping scientists develop a sharper picture of the kingdom, a confederation of tribes around the juncture of southern Europe and Asia from the fifth century B.C. until A.D. 46, when it was conquered by Rome.
Mr. Kitov’s bailiwick was dozens of mounds in what became known as the Valley of the Thracian Kings, in central Bulgaria. He found ancient graves at Strelcha, a religious complex near Starosel and the tomb of King Seuthes III, near the town of Shipka. He collected Thracian jewelry, weaponry and sculpture, including what many consider his finest discovery, the bronze head of a man with eyes of semiprecious stones.
In 2004, he discovered a dismembered skeleton positioned carefully in a tomb. Nearby was a one-and-a-half-pound mask of pure gold. It had a menacing expression and exquisitely rendered locks of hair. Mr. Kitov, and soon the archaeological world, were dazzled. “It can’t be possible,” Mr. Kitov was quoted in several press reports as saying, marveling at the moment of discovery. “It can’t be possible.” He later said, “Gold masks with this shape and weight are absolutely unknown.”
In 2005, Time magazine called the discovery of the tomb “one of the most sensational archaeological finds of recent years.”
Even before Thrace’s alliance with Troy against Greece in the Trojan War, Greeks considered Thracians barbarians. But the relics Mr. Kitov found indicated that the Thracians had been as adept at metalworking as the Trojans. They also suggested a militaristic people who had engaged in elaborate drinking rituals and had believed in resurrection after death. The opulent tombs had clearly been meant for the rich.
“These findings show that the Thracians had wealth that rivaled that of any other great kingdom of the time,” James Sickinger, a professor at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, said in an interview with Archaeology News in 2005.
Criticisms of Mr. Kitov’s methods went beyond his heavy-machinery and high-speed digging techniques, a far cry from the careful brush-and-trowel approach of most archaeologists. An article in the journal Archaeology in 2005 questioned the quality of his scholarship, his business ethics, his self-promotion and his associations with people suspected of looting and selling antiquities.
The journal reported that in 2001 a 13-member field studies committee at the National Archaeological Institute and Museum in Sofia unanimously denied him permission to lead expeditions for a year. Later that year, the committee expelled Mr. Kitov as head of the institute’s Thracian section, partly for acting like a “spoiled child” and calling the chairwoman “a moron,” the panel said, according to the journal.
Despite these censures, he continued to work as a curator for the institute and as chairman of its general assembly, the Bulgarian state news agency said.
Mr. Kitov readily acknowledged his controversial reputation. “I am a hero for some and a villain for others,” he said in an interview with Vagabond, a Bulgarian English-language magazine. “There are people who extol me for doing so much for the Thracians; there are also people who think I destroy the mounds.”
He defended his use of earthmovers, saying he had operated them so delicately that he had recovered individual beads without damaging them. Bulldozers were needed to keep up with looters equipped with off-road vehicles and high-tech gear, he said.
“The looters dig day and night,” Mr. Kitov told National Public Radio in 2005.
To a Bulgarian population struggling to find its way after Communism, Mr. Kitov’s work was a wellspring of national pride. Readers of one of the country’s largest daily newspapers rated him one of the 55 greatest Bulgarians. The government, which hopes to make the Thracian treasures a tourist attraction, has given him several awards.
Georgi Kitov was born on March 1, 1943, in the town of Dupnitsa in western Bulgaria. He graduated with a degree in history from St. Kliment Ochridski University of Sofia and studied art history in Russia in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. Information on survivors was unavailable.
The government announcement said that Mr. Kitov had written more than 200 articles. But Archaeology challenged his scholarship. It said that in 2004 he first theorized that the gold mask discovered near the skeleton had belonged to one Thracian king, then decided it had been worn by a different king, born a century apart from the other, before concluding that it had been used by a warrior.
Six days into the Olympic Games of 2004, Mr. Kitov found a coin depicting what he said was an Olympic rower. He told Reuters he was dedicating it to the rowers competing in Athens.
“What he failed to mention,” Archaeology said, “was that the ancient games had never hosted the sport of rowing.”
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