Verified Burial Mounds in Yambol Province, SE Bulgaria

This release contains field observations collected at mound locations shown in 1:50,000-scale Soviet military topographic maps from 1980s, visited in years 2009-2022 by the Tundzha Regional Archaeologial Project within the Province of Yambol in SE Bulgaria.

There are two main datasets:

features ( ~1260) which include all kinds of surface phenomena teams encountered when visiting mound locations, such as settlement mounds, surface scatters, etc.  Observations at 18 locations have been repeated, producing spatial duplicates with different attributes. A unique version can be generated by filter on one of the two columns Upto2010 and Post2010. 

mounds (~ 1095) which include only those rows in features dataset classified as extant or extinct burial mounds. Observations at 18 locations have been repeated, producing spatial duplicates with different attributes. A unique version can be generated by filter on one of the two columns Upto2010 and Post2010. 

These two datasets have been streamlined and clipped to the borders of the Yambol region. While spatial duplicates are identified in each dataset, for purpose of analysis the user can choose among the duplicates by selecting either 2010 or post-2010 version,  by filtering on one or another column. Datasets are provided in output_data/ folder in .CSV, .RDS (native R format) and .GeoJSON (spatial format for Python).

A number of accompanying datasets were generated for this release and placed in the interim/ folder, including a paired list of all spatial duplicates, an .rds/.geojson file with all verified map features from within and without Yambol Province (the largest dataset of ~ 1466 features) , as well as faims4326.rds fully digitally collected dataset between 2017-2022, containing over 40 attributes as opposed to the shared~27 from the whole span of work 2009-2022.

Both the interim and the final datasets can be found in the output_data/ . Attributes in the final datasets are described in the Metadata.csv in the root folder.  Broader description of the cleaning process and remaining uncertainties in the datasets can be found in the Readme.md file in the root folder. The scripts used for the processing and streamlining of the data sit in the scripts/ folder.

Acknowledgements

Collecting a large-scale landscape dataset would not be possible without the dedicated help of local and international colleagues. We owe massive thanks to Barbora Weissova for long-term collaboration on mound monitoring and subsequent assistance with data streamlining. We also thank Petra Heřmánková and Věra Doležálková for leading field teams and managing data collection. Last but not least, the data would not exist were it not for the students, colleagues, and volunteers from the Yambol History Museum, UNSW Australia, Macquarie University, New Bulgarian University, Charles University, Aarhus University and many other institutions. In rough chronological order of appearance these include Iliya Iliev, Georgi Iliev, Yavor Rusev, Stefan Bakardzhiev, Simon Connor, Shawn Ross, Petra Tušlová, Tereza Dobrovodská, Sona Holičková, Scott Jackson, Stanislav Marchovski, Jana Ryšavková, Radko Sedláček, Jarmila Švédová, Dragomir Garbov,  Emma Jacobson, Royce Lawrence, Briana Barton, Stephanie Black, Lachlan Hanley, Samuel Riley, Isaac Roberts, Tiana Anderson, Amy Tanswell, Mikaila Walker, Bronwyn Schlamowitz, Elissa Sinclair, Angel Bogdanov Grigorov, Matilde Jensen, Sara Vejrup, Dorthe Pedersen, Julie Lund, Joel Sercombe, Mathias Kaas, and Mathias Johansen.

Funding Information

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Linkage Projects Funding scheme LP0989901, University of Michigan International Grant, America for Bulgaria Foundation, Endeavour Short-Term Mobility Programme from the Australian Department of Education, grant 19686; National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) under eResearch Tools grant RT043; the Australian Research Council under Linkage, Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grant LE140100151; Macquarie University and UNSW Australia under internal infrastructure grant schemes; and Aarhus University Forskningsfond Starting grant no. AUFF-2018-7-22 awarded to the ‘Social Complexity in the Ancient Mediterranean’ (SDAM) project.