The Ada Tepe gold mine in Thrace (southern Bulgaria) represents one of the greatest discoveries in the Balkans during the twenty-first century. Its exploration has contributed considerably to revising some opinions on the Bronze Age in Southeast Europe, especially in terms of interterritorial relations and communications across a broad area from the Balkan Peninsula to Central Asia. Today, it is clear that the eastern Balkans were one of the major crossroads of the continent and a source of precious metals in the Bronze Age.

The results of long-term research at Ada Tepe, as well as other Bronze Age sites in Bulgaria, were presented in 2017 at two exhibitions and a scientific conference organised by the former Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology (now part of the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences), the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the National Archaeological Institute with Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. At the beginning of that year, the exhibition Das erste Gold. Ada Tepe: Das älteste Goldbergwerk Europas (The first gold: Ada Tepe – the earliest goldmine in Europe; Haag et al. Reference Haag2017) was opened in Vienna. In the following October, the next exhibition was opened in Sofia, enriched with exhibits from other sites in Bulgaria and renamed as Gold & bronze: metals, technologies and contacts in the Eastern Balkans during the Bronze Age (Alexandrov et al. Reference Alexandrov2018). Besides these two exhibitions, a scientific conference Searching for gold – resources and networks in the Bronze Age of the Eastern Balkans was held in Vienna. Most of the papers presented at that conference are now published in the present volume of the same name.

The book Searching for gold is thematically divided into four sections. It contains 16 contributions in English and is well illustrated with high-quality colour figures. The first section, ‘Ada Tepe’, is the most extensive, even though it includes only two contributions, the titles of which should be especially highlighted: ‘Dating the early mining and settlement activities at Ada Tepe: contributions to the absolute and relative chronology’ by Hristo Popov and colleagues, and ‘Comparative examination of two house inventories of the Late Bronze Age settlement at Ada Tepe (Bulgaria) and its cultural and chronological context in the Late Bronze Age of the Eastern Balkans’ by Laura Burkhardt. The first one combines two presentations and a poster presented at the Vienna conference, all focused on the results of research at the Ada Tepe mine. On 117 pages, all the uncovered structures (houses and workplaces) at the site from which radiocarbon-dated samples were obtained are described. A table with 97 absolute radiocarbon dates at the beginning of the chapter is accompanied by a detailed typological analysis of pottery from each structure, along with numerous typological tables and illustrations of contexts where samples were collected. In the second chapter, Burkhardt reconstructs the everyday life of inhabitants from two house complexes that were connected to the mine by analysing the pottery. Through this methodological approach, the difference between the two houses in their architecture and function was detected, and led to the assumption that there was co-operation between gold miners and the population in close surroundings.

It remains unclear why the researchers of Ada Tepe did not publish a monograph with these two exceptionally comprehensive works, along with other studies already presented at various conferences or published in other volumes (for example Alexandrov et al. Reference Alexandrov2018). Thus, the here-reviewed Searching for gold represents the most complete and detailed presentation to date of this highly significant prehistoric gold mine, which has inspired many of the other contributions included in the same volume.

The second section, ‘The Bronze Age within the territory of present-day Bulgaria’, contains four chapters. Some of them have been previously published in shorter form in the 2018 book (Alexandrov et al. Reference Alexandrov2018). In Searching for gold, these chapters are notably expanded and provide extensive scientific information about the results and methodological approaches. The chapters present an overview of research from the Middle Bronze Age to the onset of the Iron Age (2300/2200–1000 BC). They include numerous radiocarbon dates from southern Romania, Bulgaria and northern Greece (Krauß); the results of research of the necropolis in Baley in north-west Bulgaria with 59 graves (71 individuals) and a 500-year sequence of burial practices (Ivanov et al.); Late Bronze Age pottery from three sites in the Rhodope region (Ada Tepe, Dragoyna and Kush Kaya; by Dimitrova); and excavation results from the fortified mountain site Dragoyna in the Eastern Rhodopes (Bozhinova), which yielded finds of Mycenaean pottery dated to the Late Bronze Age and may have been a regional centre that controlled exchange with the Mycenaean world to the south.

The third section, ‘Early metalwork in the Balkans’, contains four contributions that go beyond the territorial framework of Bulgaria and present research findings from neighbouring areas (Hungary, Romania, Serbia). Although some contributions are not directly searching for gold, they all deliver a broader picture of the Bronze Age in Southeast Europe. The topics are diverse and highly interesting: shaft-hole axes in the north-eastern and eastern Balkans (fourth–third millennium BC; by Băjenaru); gold hair rings from Pannonia (Szathmári et al.); archaeometric analyses of the famous Valchitran hoard from northern Bulgaria (Mehofer et al.); the Middle Bronze Age in the Central Balkans with new absolute dates and the results of research into local bronze metallurgy (Bulatović et al.).

Six chapters form the fourth section ‘Trade networks’, which provide a broader view of cultural relations between Southeast Europe and surrounding regions, as well as distant areas further east. They all focus on exchange networks and inter-regional relationships during the Bronze Age. The authors emphasise that the eastern Balkans during the third and second millennia BC were connected through the exchange of luxury goods with neighbouring regions of the Aegean, Asia Minor, the Carpathian Basin and the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as with further afield areas such as Bahrain, Mesopotamia, Turkmenistan and the Indus Valley. These conclusions are based on archaeometric, stylistic and iconographic analyses of objects discovered in present-day Bulgaria, which were: gold (Schwall et al., Konstantinidi-Syvridi), silver and gemstone (carnelian, lapis lazuli) jewellery (Vasileva), bone figurines (Minkov), marble applications on weapons and copper oxhide ingots (Tzvetkova & Nekhrizov). The final chapter outlines potential traffic routes in ancient Thrace during the Bronze and Iron Ages by referencing Greek and Roman written sources in addition to archaeological ones (Gimatzidis). Interestingly, the last author suggests that rivers were not the main communication routes during the early Iron Age, but rather mountain passes. The entire fourth section offers a fascinating view of the social relations that may have existed in the Late Bronze Age in this part of the world. Indeed, one might ask what the population of Thrace received in exchange for the gold that was carried south to the more developed Mycenaean world. Was there trade at all or were there other types of relationships, such as vassal, colonial or something yet unknown to science?

The reviewed volume represents a valuable contribution to the study of the Bronze Age in Southeast Europe. It succeeds to embed the focal site of Ada Tepe into a wider picture that highlights the important position the gold source had for the networks of the Bronze Age. The book sheds new light on a crucial period when the development of copper and bronze metallurgy reached its peak, heralding the introduction of a new raw material, iron, which significantly influenced and accelerated the further development of the civilisations we know today.