ancient board game pieces discovered in

Ancient Board Game Pieces Discovered in Bulgarian Tomb

Story excerpted from Novite.com, Sofia News Agency:

Yet Another Ancient Tomb Unearthed in Bulgaria's Sozopol

14 August 2007, Tuesday

A team of Bulgarian archaeologists unearthed Tuesday an ancient stone

tomb, dated back to the 4th century BC, Darik News reported.

The team, lead by Krastina Panayotova, stumbled upon the tomb during

the annual archaeological excavations on the Harmani beach of the

Black Sea town of Sozopol.

A man, probably an athlete, had been buried in the tomb because the

team found an object used by athletes in antiquity.

Just a day earlier the archaeologists came upon the grave of another

man, probably a gambler. The grave was full of dice, backgammon pieces

and coins. (Emphasis added).

The team of Krastina Panayotova is working on the Harmani beach of

Sozopol, a site which archaeologist have been exploring for many years

now.

Sozopol is one of the oldest towns on Bulgarian Thrace's Black Sea

coast. The first settlement on the site dates back to the Bronze Age.

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I am a study in frustration. A further web search failed to turn up

more details about the discovery of the board game pieces the article

identified as "backgammon" pieces. There are a number of things we do

NOT know from the article, unfortunately, including the exact date of

the discovery. All we can deduce is that it was reported in the

newspaper on August 14, 2007!

We don't know how old the tomb is. Evidently it is quite a large

necropolis that is being excavated, but just because one tomb is dated

"Hellenic" to c. 400 BCE doesn't mean the team of the "gambler" is

from the same era.

We don't know how the archaeologist(s) on site arrived at the

conclusion that the gaming pieces recovered were "backgammon" pieces.

For all we know, they could have been smoothed pebbles used in the

Greek game of Polis, or any other petteia game, as no description of

the pieces was given and no photograph was provided. The fact that

dice - also no description or photograph provided - were found in the

same tomb does not necessarily mean that they were related to the

gaming pieces.

And the reference to coins found in the same tomb is intriguing. Does

this imply that the "gambler" was buried with some of his winnings? Or

perhaps the coins were meant to be a stake for his future games in

Hades/the Afterworld? Or were the "coins" actually tokens from some

other kind of board game? For example, ancient Xiang Qi (Chinese

Chess) pieces have been mistaken for coins because they were circular,

inscribed flat pieces of metal.

All I can do at this point is make a note to check in the future to

see if I can find published field notes from this excavation (ruts of