Is poverty an excuse for robbing a nation’s heritage? That’s perhaps the overriding moral question raised by Australian documentary Plundering the Past as it tracks treasure hunters in Ratiaria - a former Roman settlement near Archar in north-west Bulgaria.

The excavators themselves are poor and desperate, pawns of greedy organised crime gangs for whom valuable Roman Thracian remains - pottery, coins, stones and bronze figurines - provide rich pickings. And, as the documentary makes clear, the sale of plundered Roman antiquities can be as lucrative as the drug trade.

"Everyone digs here, by hand or with a pickaxe. Most diggers make very little money. A few people make big money, but not us - the diggers," one villager tells presenter David O’Shea.

Bulgarian archaeologist Ventsislav Gergov condemns the hunters.

"People need to make a living but not by destroying out nation’s heritage. We are killing the goose that lays the golden egg. That is the reality of treasure hunting," Gergov says.
Gergov’s anger, however, is directed more at the authorities - the police, lawmakers and the courts - whom, he says, have failed to crack down on activities.

Gergov takes O’Shea to a monastery where he sees fresh signs of excavation. He says he’s visited Macedonia, Turkey and Greece but that "they are way ahead of us" (Bulgaria) in preserving their heritage.

In some parts of Ratiaria the only areas left untouched are those that diggers know have already been throughly excavated by archaeologists. Gergov leads O’Shea to diggers in the film and is confronted with a death threat.

"These guys are poor," Gergov tells O’Shea. "But sometimes they carry guns and might even shoot."

No choice?
O’Shea interviews Todor Chobanov who prosecutes the theft and trafficking of antiquities and who was recently appointed Deputy Minister of Culture. "There are very willing buyers who will give huge amounts of money for artifacts and goods. The profits are comparable to those of the drugs trade," Chobanov says.

The diggers do their homework beforehand, studying auction house catalogues for the most valuable stock. Several treasure hunters even agree to take O’Shea with them on condition that they remain anonymous. They tell O’Shea they have no choice but to do what they do, claiming that work that existed for them during communism has disappeared. A recurrent theme throughout the film is that since the collapse of communism a kind of Wild West capitalism has prospered in Bulgaria.

O’Shea interviews a bemused-looking local police chief who cannot cite figures for recent arrests for treasure hunting - let alone successful convictions - even in the light of tough anti-trafficking laws introduced in April.

In fact, out of the 200 or so cases sent to court, not one has resulted in a jail term. "In many areas we have their (the people’s) co-operation but not in this," says the police chief.   
A self-described "collector" of Roman antiquities, named as Petar Dimitrov, tells O’Shea he would not hand in any new antiquities he discovers, supposedly for the state to keep in trust. Neither would he agree to register his collection.

"If I find a jar of coins in the ground, it’s mine," Dimitrov says. Diana Gergova, from the National Institute of Archaeologists, concludes the programme by saying that poverty is no excuse for the diggers’ crimes, claiming that everyone has a choice. "It’s how well you use your knowledge - for something legal and creative or something illegal that ruins your country," she says.

O’Shea later gave this interview about the film. "The real tragedy in a place like Ratiaria is that the people searching for treasure are looking for a couple of bucks here and there, where what they could be doing is sitting in a thriving tourist centre. There could be hotels, and bars, and restaurants, and tourists everywhere just like there are in Rome, or Athens. Instead, those people are sitting around, complaining that they’ve got no money, and that they are forced to go hunting for treasure, and the state appears to be doing very little about it, and the police are clearly not serious about it."