The Wall-Street Why Shouldn’t Archaeologists and Architects Create a “Reconstructed” Wall Around the Archaeological Site Provadia-Solnitsata, North-Eastern Bulgaria?

The present paper aims at providing argumentation for my demand of stopping the building of a “reconstructed” wall around the Provadia- Solnitsata site, north eastern Bulgaria. Two kinds of arguments I put forward. The first one is technical- the malpractice of the excavator, which I have detected in the applied excavation procedure that consists of overlooking important archaeological and stratigraphic features of the site. The second one deals with the conceptual framework that allows manipulation of archaeological contexts, and which is born by the interaction between the conceptual constructs such as ‘Fake Archaeology’ and ‘Post-Truth’. My basic argumentation is grounded on developing a theoretical framework of the so-called ‘archaeological cognition’. I provide some cases of typical behaviour of professional archaeologists and lay visitors when they encounter unfamiliar situation the archaeological context(s). I seek the explanation of this typical human behaviour in Foucauldian terms of ‘technologies of the self’ and the ‘personal will to know his/her proper past’, which in turn makes both professionals and lay people very sensitive to the slightest manipulation of archaeological record. This type of human sensitivity constitutes the grounds on which I develop further the argumentation of my demand for stopping the building of this wall that through its false physical presence will prevent the proper perception of the complex archaeological contexts of this site.

Keywords: Human perception; Archaeological context; Archaeological cognition; Archaeological landscape