On October 2nd the festival „Bulgarian days in Chicago“, organized by the Bulgarian-American Association, was held for its 15th consecutive year. As part of the festival, the new General Consul of Bulgaria in Chicago, Simeon Stoilov, guests from the Agency for Bulgarians Abroad, and many other representatives of the Bulgarian culture and businesses in the U.S. were introduced. Todor Petev, the Administrative Director of the American Research Center in Sofia (U.S. Office), arrived from New York and introduced the achievements of the American Research Center in Sofia. Dilyana Ivanova, administrative assistant of the Bulgarian archaeological program at the Field Museum in Chicago, followed Petev with a more detailed accounting of the past and currently funded projects. Dilyana communicated the history and the results of collaborative grant administrative program of the Anthropological Department at The Field Museum and the American Research Center in Sofia, financed by the America for Bulgaria Foundation. So far, the program has sponsored ten archaeological and museum proposals in Bulgaria. Todor Petev and Dilyana Ivanova introduced Dr. Tsenka Tsanova, who is the first ABF funded postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at The Field Museum. Dr. Tsanova comes from the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, where she has worked for the past three years. Her current project is entitled: “ The Emergence of Behavioral Modernity: Middle to Upper Paleolithic Transition in the Eastern Balkans: Neanderthal-Modern Human Cultural Transactions.“
