The Dabene Treasure was unearthed in 2004 near the village of Dabene in the municipality of Karlovo, Plovdiv Province, central Bulgaria.
The excavations in the area began after two archaeologists from the National Historical Museum met a local woman with an exquisite golden necklace found by her husband while ploughing with his tractor. The couple was unaware of the origins of the jewel and cooperated with the archaeologists.

The whole treasure consists of 20,000 gold jewelerry items from 18 to 23 carats. The most important of them was a dagger made of gold and platinum with an unusual edge. The treasure was dated to the end of the 3rd millennium B.C. The scientists suggest that the Karlovo valley where Dabene is located used to be a major crafts center which exported golden jewelry all over Europe. That conclusion was made because the golden elements were not discovered in a burial mound and there are no remains of bones or ceramics and therefore the elements were not burial gifts.

The treasure was unearthed in perfect condition and was exhibited in the National Historical Museum without restoration on 9 August 2009.
The gold objects from Dabene, Karlovo, were found in peculiar-looking structures called ritual, which resemble low burial mounds. More than 15 such mines have been explored so far, and gold finds have been found in only some of them. These structures date from the Early Bronze Age and date fairly precisely to the period between 2450 and 2100 BC. The objects are placed together with a variety of sometimes richly decorated pottery, bronze, silver and glass objects on the ground and covered with river stones. To date, more than 21 elements of strings, gold spirals, beads and appliqués have been found. The sizes and shapes of the beads are different - they can be in the form of small rings, washers, cylinders, double pyramids or biconical. The smallest of them have an outer diameter of 1,5 mm, and the largest reach almost 1 cm. Three gold strings have been recovered from them, which consist of elements of different types — beads and distributors. Such ornaments were found in ritual structures No.1 and No.3. The spirals are made of gold wire and have a different number of coils, and the appliqués are of two types, serving as decoration and sewn onto clothing. An impression is made by the golden dagger weighing 42,8 g from Ritual Structure No. 5, which is unique to the lands of Ancient Thrace and Southeast Europe, as well as the small box with a lid made of pure silver, which is unknown in antiquity from other areas. It is interesting to note that the gold objects in each of the studied structures are different in shape and stand out from similar ones in the others. This testifies to a different style in their production and to its duration.

In 2004, by a mere chance, archaeology received a precious gift – the treasure from the village of Dabene, Karlovo, Bulgaria.
In the spring of 2004, near the town of Sopot, an archaeological expedition was making excavations in a Roman roadside service station, located on an old Roman road that passed nearby. One day two archaeologists entered a shop in the town and noticed a woman wearing a golden necklace reminding them of ancient gold. She told them that her husband came across it while ploughing a field in Dabene. The man showed them the place and soon after that the archaeologists started their excavations. In the period 2004-2007 over 20 000 gold jewellery items from 18 to 23 carats were found – beads, necklace rings, earrings, spirals, hairpins, little golden amulets in the form of an adze and other exquisitely wrought ornaments – the smallest are with a diameter of 1,5 mm. Thats an unthinkable size according to our idea of the technologies of the Bronze Age. Beads from DabeneThe items date from the end of the 3rd millennium BC. It turned out that a highly developed civilization inhabited the Karlovo Valley at that time and according to some scientist the precious metal was exported to the entire Middle and Southern Europe. And the gold was wrought by local master goldsmiths who lived in these regions. Especially interesting is the place itself, where the items were found. The archaeologists knew about a prehistoric settlement from the 4th-3rd millennium BC but it was located several kilometers from here. On the place of the findings there are no traces of a settlement or buildings, of fires, and there are no clues that this is an ancient necropolis. The finds are made in hundreds of little mounds in the field itself. Ceramic, bronze and silver vessels, as well as a golden plaque were found in them. Probably the items were buried as a sacrifice to an unknown deity, most likely to the Great Mother Goddess of the Thracians. The vessels were put in the ground, the golden necklaces were torn and scattered above them and then covered with earth as a gift to the Goddess.

By the excavations in 2006 a unique golden dagger or poniard was found – alloy of gold, platinum and other metals with a high purity of the gold. Golden dagger from DabeneThe golden dagger is 16 cm (6.3 inch) long. Its point end is cut and sharpened and at the butt end there are two holes used for fastening the haft, made of bone or wood. The alloy that it was made of is so hard that the dagger remained sharp through the millennia and the gold content is so high that it was preserved in a perfect condition without patina. It is one of a kind in the entire world. Scientists assume that it represented the power of its owner and most probably belonged to a ruler or a priest.

At the time of the excavations in 2007, in a deep and stone-filled pit, were found eight different in kind and size ceramic vessels, one cup and a golden spiral made of high quality gold and interestingly wrought – from a narrow golden pipe.

Objects from Dabene
Golden rings
Spirals from golden pipe
Beads
Golden necklace
Spirals-gold

The research continues. We dont know what more will be found out about the ancient civilization that existed here, but the Dabene finds have already changed the ideas of the archaeologists and scientists regarding the forming of the European civilization. They threw light on the influence of this ancient civilization, existed on the territory of contemporary Bulgaria, on the development of the European civilization. The Dabene treasure gives the connection between the age old civilization of the Varna Culture and the treasures from the village of Hotnitsa from the 5th millennium BC, which were somehow isolated in time until now, with no relation to the Thracian tribes and their masterpieces from the better known 1st and 2nd millennia BC. Are these the more ancient ancestors of the Thracians, called pre-Thracians? What happened in the 5th millennium so they disappeared for 2 000 years? Invasions of other tribes, wars, a world cataclysm, a flood?