As many as 15,000 small pieces of finely crafted gold have been discovered in a group of 4,500-year-old graves from central Bulgaria -- a trove of beads, earrings and other small artifacts that were buried with a chieftain or king sometime before the 23rd century B.C.

The find in the village of Dabene, about 75 miles east of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, dates from about the same period as the ancient city of Troy, and some researchers have suggested that gold workers from the region of the village may have produced much of the treasure found at Troy and other ancient localities, such as Mycenae in Greece.

The find indicates that the village "had a very impressive social elite that could be compared with that of Troy," said archaeologist Lolita Nikolova, who has worked in the area but was not involved in the find.

These are the first cemeteries in this area that have been found from this Bronze Age period, and they indicate that "the village was in close contact with cultures to both the east and west," she said. "These discoveries will rewrite all the prehistory of the Balkans."

The gold artifacts were placed on display last week at the National History Museum in Sofia, where curators polished the pieces and restrung the golden beads to make necklaces. The site was excavated by archaeologist Martin Hristov of the museum, who has been working at other sites in the region.

Last year, two young archaeologists on his project were purchasing cigarettes at a shop in Dabene when they saw a gold necklace worn by a farm woman. When queried, she said her husband had found the necklace while plowing his fields. He, in turn, showed them the primitive cemetery, located only about 200 yards from where Nikolova had been working.

The site contains four tumuli, or burial mounds, each about six yards in diameter and projecting only an inch or so above the surface. When the team members excavated, they found that the graves' occupants had been cremated -- the first time such a form of interment had been seen in the area. They also found bronze knives and pottery that was characteristic of the early Bronze Age, he said.

One grave did not contain any gold, and a second had only 21 pieces, he said. But the third contained more than 15,000 individual pieces, including small beads, fine spirals that may have been earrings, and rings.

The find is not the first gold discovery in Bulgaria. Earlier studies have shown that the region was home to some of the world's first gold workers, who mined the Carpathian and Sredna Gora mountains some 6,700 years ago and panned for the metal in gold-rich rivers.

The identity of the gold workers remains something of a mystery. A few hundred years after the Dabene gold was buried, the region was occupied by the Thracians, a powerful culture ruled by a priest-king. The Thracians did not have a written language, and most of what is known about them comes second-hand from the Greeks, who considered them barbarians.