Varna Necropolis

The Varna Necropolis (Bulgarian: Варненски некропол) (also Varna Cemetery) is a burial site in the western industrial zone of Varna (approximately half a kilometre from Lake Varna and 4 km from the city centre), Bulgaria, internationally considered one of the key archaeological sites in world prehistory. The oldest gold treasure in the world, dating from 4,600 BC to 4,200 BC, was discovered at the site.

The site was accidentally discovered in October 1972 by excavator operator Raycho Marinov. The first to value the significant historical meaning was Dimitar Zlatarski, the creator of the Dalgopol Historical Museum. He was called by the locals to examine what they had found earlier that day. Being a bright historical figure at that time, he realized how important the finding was, so he contacted the Varna Historical Museum and, after signing government papers, he handed over the research to the direction of Mihail Lazarov (1972–1976) and Ivan Ivanov (1972–1991). About 30% of the estimated necropolis area is still not excavated.

A total of 294 graves have been found in the necropolis, many containing sophisticated examples of metallurgy (gold and copper), pottery (about 600 pieces, including gold-painted ones), high-quality flint and obsidian blades, beads, and shells.

The graves have been dated to 4560–4450 BC by radiocarbon dating in 2006 and belong to the Eneolithic Varna culture, which is the local variant of the KGKVI.

There are crouched and straight inhumations. Some graves do not contain a skeleton, but grave gifts (cenotaphs). These symbolic (empty) graves are the richest in gold artifacts. Three thousand gold artifacts were found, with a weight of approximately six kilograms. Grave 43 contained more gold than has been found in the entire rest of the world for that epoch. Three symbolic graves contained masks of unbaked clay.

...
Wikipedia