Various biomolecular methods increasingly augment foundational methodologies for the study of pastoralism, including isotopic analyses, analyses of ancient human and animal DNA, identification of milk proteins, and residue analyses that identify animal carcass fat and milk fat. Although the results of biomolecular analyses can significantly expand the evidentiary basis for the archaeology of pastoralism and have in many ways revolutionized the field, they are not some sort of panacea that can easily solve all of the conceptual, interpretive, empirical, and disciplinary problems laid out in Chapter 1.

Twentieth-century scholars defined “pastoral nomadism” as an environmental adaptation inherently linked to specific political, social, and economic traits: long-distance mobility; tribalism, social egalitarianism, and dependence on sedentary agricultural communities; economic specialization in pastoralism; and “marginal” land. To resolve conceptual conflation and promote the writing of histories of pastoralism, archaeologists require a new framework that draws on anthropological ideas about mobility, political complexity, intensification of production, and pastoral landscapes.

The Introduction begins with a description of the final days in the life of Sofia’s main thermal bath that in 1913 stood in the city’s historic center as the last representative of the Ottoman approach to place-making. I show how the decision to demolish one of the structures most characteristic of Sofia’s Ottoman experience cleared the path for the formulation of the national narrative of Sofia’s history. The narrative that still dominates both the scholarly and popular ideas of Sofia’s urbanistic identity is based on an ideologically biased interpretation of the Ottoman understanding of urban space, natural resource management, and public works. In the Introduction, I argue that Sofia’s key position within the Ottoman political and institutional landscapes as well as its role as a hub of cultural and technological exchange make the study of its history a good vantage point for overcoming the artificial spatial boundaries that still divide the research of the European, Asian, and African provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The Introduction shows how the environmental characteristics of Sofia and the Sofia plain make water the most natural and effective thematic pivot for the study of the construction and historical evolution of space and place.

This chapter continues the story of Sofia’s water supply, beginning with the political turmoil that marred urban fabrics and economies across the Ottoman Balkans from the 1790s to the 1820s and ending in 1912 when, after a long series of failed attempts, post-Ottoman Sofia received its first modern water supply system. I emphasize the similarity in the predicaments that shaped the Ottoman and Bulgarian policies in the fields of urban planning, underground infrastructures, and natural resource management. I explain how a series of extreme human-made and natural phenomena, including banditry, war, and intensified seismicity limited the capabilities of the Ottoman authorities to accomplish their modernizing intentions. In post-Ottoman Bulgaria, the modernization of urban fabrics was seen as a statement of the superiority of the nation-state over its former imperial master. However, in a series of attempts to meet the water needs of the national capital’s constantly expanding population, the post-Ottoman authorities found themselves continually unable to come up with solutions superior to the water supply practices of their predecessors. The chapter argues that throughout the long nineteenth century Sofia’s water supply functioned within the bounds of the system established by the Ottomans.

This chapter explores the making of Sofia as an Ottoman city. The central thread in the narrative is the functioning of the system of pious foundations, which played the most decisive role in the expansion and transformation of the built fabric and the provisioning of public services. The main theme is the city’s relationship with the natural environment and the construction, functioning, and maintenance of its water supply system. The chapter specifically aims at bringing attention to the fact that the upsurge of building activity and the Ottomanization of the built environment that were experienced since the mid-fifteenth century, and especially in the sixteenth century, were accompanied by the establishment of a water infrastructure. Yahya Pasha’s water supply system was established at the turn of the sixteenth century, the beginning of a period that witnessed the biggest advances of the Ottomans both in the construction of water facilities and in the institutionalization of water management. Chronologically, the narrative encompasses the entire early modern period in Sofia’s history, shedding light on Ottoman water supply both in terms of its technical aspects and in terms of the role that it played in the construction of the local eco-community.

The Epilogue picks up the story that this book begins with, the story of the demolition of the last symbol of Ottoman Sofia’s water culture, the city’s main thermal bath, elaborating on the construction of the modern Bath Square as a showcase of the young Bulgarian nation’s resolve to join the modern world. I argue that the making and imposition of national space in the post-Ottoman period led to the creation of an entirely new place in Sofia’s historic center by the beginning of the 1910s. The modernization of the street network replaced the old naming system that reflected the streets’ natural and social environments with a new one that employed the already large arsenal of national heroes and events. The efforts of urban planners and architects to create Sofia’s image of a capital city of a modern nation-state converged in the project for the construction of Bath Square whose key features would be monumentality and representativeness. The new buildings represented not the environmental characteristics of place but the success of the nation-state and the steadfast pursuit of modernity.

This chapter explores the ways in which the Sofia plain’s hydrothermal wealth influenced the local human communities and their relationship with the natural and built environments. How did the abundance of thermal water impact the daily routine of life on the plain? How did the ubiquitous presence of springs shape the locals’ perceptions of settled and wild space? In a city whose center was designated by a hot spring and occupied by bathing facilities, to what extent did participation in the rituals and practices rooted in the use of thermal water lead to the formation of a sense of place? What was the place of thermal waters and public baths in Ottoman and foreign observers’ perceptions of Sofia’s urban form and space? Taking issue with the confused, stereotyped, and biased popular idea of Ottoman Sofia’s built space, this chapter attempts to localize the bathing facilities in the city’s historic center and at least partially reconstruct the area of the thermal spring. The chapter sheds light on the roles that Sofia’s baths played as pillars of urban culture, key constituent parts of the image of the city, and important anchors for the achievement of a sense of place.