Archaeological Site Tumba Madzari

(Vecer, 23.03.2007) - Gazi Baba Municipality is joining exploration of the Tumba Madzari site and has allotted 150,000 denars from its budget for culture for this year. With as much funds allotted by the Ministry of Culture, archaeologists will make effort to turn the site from a large hole with earth into a tourist attraction.
Director of the Museum of Macedonia Meri Anicin Pejoska says Gazi Baba Municipality, the Museum of Macedonia and Non-governmental Organization for Youth and Sport are performing together within this initiative. The NGO will carry out various activities over promotion of the site among young people.
“Certainly, the municipality is the main manager of the activities with special engagement of the Mayor. It will invest in the research activities at the Museum as well by doubling the initial amounts and investing in the infrastructural arrangement of the site: fencing, lighting, access and settling or buying a part of the ownership of the site, of course on behalf of the Museum, which actually possess most of it,” Pejoska says.
She also says that construction of a museum and educational area in the original Neolithic architecture is planned, and the monumental sculpture of the Archetypal Mother, or Magna Mater, is devised as a place for honouring fertility and spring at the initiative of artists in the Museum.

Gazi Baba says the move to fund research of Tumba Madzari, located in the municipality, is investing in cultural values within the municipality and is in service of cultural tourism and education of young people. The Municipality has already incorporated Goddess the Archetypal Mother in its emblem and regards it as its trade mark although it is of enormous importance for the City of Skopje itself and has already become recognizable as its trademark and original souvenir.
The Archetypal Mother Cult
Tumba Madzari is one of the most important Neolithic settlements in Macedonia. A half of the site was destroyed long ago with a settlement built over it. In 1981, the site gave its most representative finding ever – the Goddess Mother, which confirmed the existence of the cult of the Archetypal Mother – the fundamental cult of Early Stone Age. But what singles out this site as a separate unit is the artistic performance of the cult. The showroom of the Museum of Macedonia displays a dozen of fragments of objects through which worshiping of this cult was passed on.