Since the beginning of the "pyramids" affair, one of the things Mr. Osmanagic, his team and his supporters, repeat again and again, is the idea that Visoko region would be "terra incognita" for the archaeologists; that enables them to claim 1) that the "official" archaeologists do not do their job; 2) that, thanks to Mr. Osmanagic, the archaeological wealth of the region will be revealed to the world. This idea is doubly false; first, even if there is certainly still much to research, Visoko region archaeology is much better known than Mr. Osmanagic says or hopes; second, it is more and more evident that the "excavations" he conducts, far from showing the region real wealth to advantage, have already damaged, at least partially, a few archaeological sites.

Middle Ages

The archaeological wealth of Visoko region is, for medieval times, undeniable. Visoko and its immediate vicinity, along the Bosna valley, used to form the heart of the Bosnian medieval kingdom. I already mentioned (en) Visoki, fortress and royal residence where numerous royal charts were written during the XIVth century. The plan of the fortress is known, it has been researched, at least partially, and the location is protected as National Monument (en) since 2004. But the slopes of Visocica hill, that were probably densely settled during the medieval times, haven’t been correctly researched still; the decision, taken by the Commission to protect National Monuments in 2006, of extending the protected area permitted to prevent any further "excavation" on these slopes where Mr. Osmanagic, eager for exposing the geological substrate he considers as "walls" of the "pyramid of the Sun", was actually throwing away the possible archaeological layers above.

Beside Visoki, numerous other places show that this valley was an essential part of the medieval kingdom; these sites are known mostly since the important work of the archaeologist and medieval historian Pavao Andelic. There is for instance the site of Mile/Arnautovici (en) [1], a political and religious center. Excavated at the beginning of the XXth century by the Austrian archaeologist Carl Patsch, it was thoroughly studied in the 1970’s by Pavao Andelic, who took it out of oblivion and made it known as a site of national importance [2]. There can be found the remains of Saint-Nicholas church (in fact four superposed buildings: a building from late Antiquity, a Romanesque church and two successive Gothic churches), which was used for the coronation of some of the Bosnian kings, particularly Tvrko I Kotromanic and Stjepan Tomas; remains of a Franciscan monastery; more than a hundred tombs, inside and outside the church, including several royal tombs (Stjepan II Kotromanic and Tvrko I Kotromanic); Mile was also the place where were held the Bosnian States assemblies.

Another important site, never really researched, is the one of Mostre, religious and universitary center, seat of the dignitaries of the Bosnian schismatic Church (ecclesia bosniensis, considered heretical by the Roman Catholic Church as well as by the Orthodox one). One may mention also the site of Biskupici, again in the Bosna valley, where was found one of the most important medieval epigraphic documents in Bosnia, the "Kulin Ban’s plate" dating from the end of the XIIth century.

Neolithic

However, the human settlement in Visoko valley is far older than the Middle Ages, and numerous prehistoric sites are known. Stultitia, having studied the bibliographies about the region history - a deed the Foundation "specialists" seem not even to have tried to do, gives us on her blog very interesting extracts from a monography written in 1984, "Visoko and its surroundings through History". The first part of this book was written by several historians and archaeologists (Ivo Bojanovski, Borivoj Covic, Brunislav Marijanovic) under the direction of Pavao Andelic, and is a summary of the knowledge and the archeaological sites in Visoko region through Prehistory, Antiquity and Middle Ages.

The chapter about Neolithic (bs) gives informations on seven known sites, shown on this map:

Numerous details are given on the two well researched sites, the only ones that were at least partially excavated when the book was published, the sites of Arnautovici and of Okoliste (number 5 and 6 on the map). Okoliste, that belongs to the Butmir culture (from the site of Butmir near Sarajevo), and is dated 4700 to 4500 BC. is the most interesting; new excavations have been made for five years by an international team led by Zilka Kujundzic-Vejzagic [3] from Sarajevo Museum, and by Johannes Müller from Kiel University in Germany (see the pages devoted to Okoliste on the Kiel University (de) and on the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (de) websites. These excavations, which, by the way, have been entirely financed by the German Institute, the Bosnian authorities never having given a cent, have proven that it is one of the most important neolithic places in Europe, maybe unique by its dimensions: it was indeed a really big settlement of about 300 houses, circled with several enclosures and fences, in which lived probably around 3000 people (that is exceptional during the Neolithic, when the settlements did not count more than a few hundreds people). Beside a huge amount of material (lithic material, ceramics, statuettes...), the site could well provide the archaeologists with answers to some crucial questions, particularly the question of the process of the transition from "simple, egalitarian societies of small settlements to complex, hierarchical societies with big, dense settlements" [4].

Among the other neolithic sites mentioned in the monography, there is also the one of Zbilje (number 3 on the above map), which is said to be extended on a very large area on the high terraces of the river. It has to be stressed that the village of Zbilje is precisely the one which lies at the foot of Pljesevica hill, the so-called "pyramid of the Moon", and that a large part of Mr. Osmanagic’s excavations is taking place at the foot of the hill: one can see here the location of the various probes, and the fact that the probes number 1 and 12 are precisely located on these "high terraces" at the foot of the hill. Two other sites known as neolithic, the Dvor and Ginje ones (number 1 and 2 on the above map), South of Visoko, may also have drawn the attention of amateur pseudo-archaeologists wishing to tread in Mr. Osmanagic’s footsteps. Indeed, one can find on the Foundation website a series of four documents (1 (bs), 2, 3 (bs) and 4 (bs)) written by an "architect" and two "veterinarians", all of them "graduate" and enthousiast; they triumphally present to Mr. Osmanagic their discovery of two "formations" near the villages of Dvor and Ginje, "formations" that, convinced as they are that they found new traces of the "mysterious civilization" which built the pyramids, they hurried to begin "excavating", on the slopes where the 1984 monography mentions the presence of two small neolithic settlements.

Bronze and Iron Ages

The following chapter (bs) in the monography written under Pavao Andelic’s direction is devoted to the end of the Prehistory, very rich in Visoko region. During this period a lot of settlements were installed on the heights for defensive reasons; a number of these prehistoric villages bear today the name of "gradina", "gradac" or "grad", just like Visocica hill of which another name is "Grad". Pertaining to this hill that Mr. Osmanagic calls the "pyramid of the Sun", the monography mentions "the great amount of prehistoric ceramics" that can be found "everywhere on the slopes", which is a clue for an almost certain "lengthy prehistoric settlement" dating from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.

Stultitia shows the connections between these facts and some statements from former members of Mr. Osmanagic’s projet, for instance the statements made by the archaeologist Silvana Cobanov (bs) in June 2006, when she mentioned the discovery on the "pyramid of the Sun" of "neolithic weapons and ceramics"; one may remember also the fact that some artifacts were "lost" by the Foundation (see here (en) and Stultitia’s article "The missing artifacts (en)"). Everything seems to point in the same direction: the Foundation, before the Commission to protect National Monuments extended the protected area to Visocica slopes, actually "disturbed" some neolithic or Bronze Age sites, without any cataloguing or documentation of the findings as the aim of the "excavations" was to expose as fast as possible the pyramid "walls".

Last, an important part of this chapter (bs) in the monography is devoted to two Iron Age burial-places, one located in Gracanica and the other in Vratnica, in the same place where Mr. Osmanagic’s Foundation is presently excavating a "mysterious stone structure (en)". The description of Vratnica tomb is particularly interesting: as Stultitia noticed, it shows numerous similarities with the rectangular structure, presented a few months ago as "entrance to the pyramid", found in the probe number 12 on Pljesevica: identical localization at the foot of the hill, at the place where the slope joins the flat lands of the valley; identical rectangular shape partially dug in the slope; similar walls made of stones of various size; identical dimensions, about 3 meters by 2; even the "nails" found by the Greek archaeologist Nancy Gallou in the Pljesevica rectangular structure that could possibly remind of the fibulae pins found in Vratnica.

Un des murs de la tombe de Vratnica

A wall from the Vratnica tomb

Structure de Pljesevica

Pljesevica structure

Structure de Pljesevica

Pljesevica structure

Stultitia so points to the numerous clues that could allow one to think that the Osmanagic team emptied on Pljesevica a burial-place from the Iron Age; one of these clues being the statement made by the Egyptian geologist Mr. Barakat himself, in front of the Supreme Council of Culture in Egypt. This statement was repeated as follows in the newspaper The Dailey Star Egypt (en): "He indicated that he had found a tomb behind one of the pyramids. It contained human bones and organic materials which could have been a preserved organ or liquid food.Barkat said he believed the grave was some 5,000 years old."

If the medieval and prehistoric sites on Visocica are now protected from Mr. Osmanagic calamitous excavations - at least as long as the Minister of Culture Grahovac and the authorities of the Commission to protect National Monuments are in charge, the case is different for the four locations mentioned above, Vratnica, Zbilje, Dvor and Ginje. Not to mention that the sites known and described in Pavao Andelic’s monography are probably only a small part of the archaeological wealth hidden in Visoko valley, that was occupied by men for more than 7000 years [5]. This archaeological wealth, endangered by the politicians’ incompetence and the "pyramidomania" that makes of businessmen, architects, geodesists or veterinarians "archaeologists", is most valuable, for science, for the Visoko region and its development, for entire Bosnia which already saw an irreplaceable part of its heritage destroyed during the war; the Bosnian patriots, "proud of their country and its people (en)", should really think a little about it.