Proto-Bulgarian Cemetery at Balchik Several years now Prof. Dr. Sc. Lyudmila Doncheva-Petkova and her small team have been excavating the earliest known Proto-Bulgarian cemetery. It is situated in the area of the former Air Force Base near Balchik, on the Black Sea coast. 175 burials have been excavated till now. In 2005, the southwestern boundary of the cemetery was established and 20 new burials were excavated: 11 cremation burials and 9 inhumations. Certain grave gifts relate the cemetery to sites in the Ukraine and Crimea as well as to Avarian material in the Middle Danube; they evidenced that the cemetery has been established in the first decades of the existence of the Bulgarian state, in the late 7th century AD, and that it had existed in the 8th 7th century AD. Prof. Dr. Sc. Lyudmila Doncheva-Petkova