Perperikon entre nature et histoire : les dimensions multiples d’un site archéologique et le paysage de l’identité bulgare

Abstract

The paper considers how the archaeological site, Perperikon, portrayed in the media as “the top archaeological discovery”, is constructed as a place associated with Bulgarian national identity and increasingly commodified for the purposes of tourism.On the ground of contemporary constructivist perspectives on culture, we show how archaeology and its ways of ‘reading the past’ was used for triggering imaginary of the nation’s remote past, providing tangible ‘truths’ and in the same time generating objects and sites recast as touristic ‘must-see’. The more general and theoretical considerations in the first part are illustrated by the example of archeological site Perperikon in Southern Bulgaria (the Rhodopes mountain). The largest part of the paper is thus dedicated to the dynamics of production of place brought from ‘nature’ to ‘culture’ throuth its transformation into an archaeological site. Initially viewed as a site saturated with medieval remains (from the middle Byzantine period), its chronology was reconsidered to fit the vision of a particular Thracian antiquity. It was assigned to the culture of Ancient Thracians through the images of Orpheus and Dionysos, which have been reimagined as specifically Thracian deities. Associated with archaeological materiality – a tomb, a shrine – they are reinserted in the national imaginary through narratives compiled by a leading archaeologist, the ‘Bulgarian Indiana Jones’, and chartered through the media that shape the centrality of Perperikon in the last 20 years. The ancient imagery which provides the nation with long chronologically structured history plays also the role of added value for the locality. It successfully turned the site into leading destination of both ‘pilgrimage’ and national tourism.To finish, I consider how the archaeological knowledge is involved in the production of the cultural capital of a Balkan nation.