Albert Dumont: Rapport sur un Voyage Archeologique en Thrace.Paris 1871 First edition,large in 8vo,publishers original paper covers slightly trimmed,text clean and bright,complete,overall in very good condition A distinguished French archaeologist Albert Dumont (1842-1884), later became the director of the French School at Athens. Dumont’s report is significant because it is one of the very first systematic attempts to treat Thrace as a distinct archaeological field. Before Dumont, Thrace was often dismissed as a barbarian fringe of the Greek world.The report documents a journey undertaken in 1868. Dumont traveled from Constantinople through Adrianople and Philippopolis, mapping sites that were virtually unknown to Western scholars. He was among the first to identify and categorize the,Thracian Rider steles, small stone reliefs of a horseman that are unique to the region's ancient religion.Dumont was fascinated by the massive burial mounds,the tumuli, that dot the Thracian plains.He provided some of the earliest descriptions of these structures, which later proved to contain the spectacular gold treasures of the Odrysian kings. As an epigraphist, he recorded hundreds of Greek inscriptions from sites like Trajanopolis and Plotinopolis, many of which were built into the walls of Ottoman mosques or Byzantine churches.He did not ignore the medieval layer. He documented the Byzantine fortifications of Adrianople and the ruins of the Middle Ages.The first comprehensive survey of Thrace