Romania

Alexandrovo One of the most important discoveries of Thracian tumuli was made at the village of Alexandrovo in the Chaskovo region in L1999 and it excavated between 2000 and 2003 (http://www. coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/Regional/SEE/IRPPSAAH/FS/FS _Bulgaria_ThracianTomb_Alexandrovo_APP.pdf). In the dromos a frieze with 2 similar scenes depicts a horseman fighting a warrior on foot above a panel of marble imitation. In the W lunette of the small antechamber another image of a horseman fighting a standing figure is depicted. In the central chamber, the decoration of the walls and the dome consists of several horizontal bands in red, black, white and yellow, and 2 friezes with various scenes. The lower frieze is badly damaged and only 4 human figures taking part in a funerary or heroic feast with table and utensils are still visible. The upper frieze contains 4 hunting scenes, including 4 horsemen, 4 hunters on foot attacking 2 deer and 2 boars pursued by 9 dogs. Across the entrance a 2-line graffito was incised on the wall-paintings in Gr ca. 1.7m above the floor of the chamber in the style of a Gr funerary inscription reading: Kozimases chrestos (Kitov 2004; Sharankov 2005). The tomb is comparable to the Kazanlak tomb and it provides us with a new centre of painted Thracian élite tombs. Smiadovo Very few Gr epitaphs have been found in the Thracian interior, but recently an epitaph written on an architrave of a monumental tomb in the surroundings of the village of Smiadovo, in the Šumen district, was discovered. The inscription dated to the L4−E3 Ct BC reads: ‘Gonimaseze, wife of Seuthes’ (Atanasov and Nedelcev 2002).