Excavations of the Rusokastro fortress for the current archaeological season have ended. Archaeologists studied the north-western fortress wall, during which they discovered important new facts about the fortification of the medieval city.
It turns out that the builders of the wall used the bedrock, cutting it further and building on top of it. Because the slopes here are extremely steep, at some point the building collapsed on the slope, leaving only mortar imprints on the rock.
Thanks to them, a hitherto unknown 25-meter route of the fortress wall was located, starting from the northwest corner of the citadel in the north direction.
The wall itself is extremely massive – it is 3 meters wide, with faces of large stones with a mortar joint, founded directly on the rock. Another 27 meters of the preserved building have been fully explored, with a height of up to 2 m. It has been established that extremely massive stone removal and destruction of the wall in the last hundred years.
A completely new, hitherto unknown rectangular battle tower was also discovered during the excavations. It was built together with the wall towards the middle of XIII c., but after a few decades it was dismantled, and an additional entrance was formed in its place.
Along the outer face of the wall, two graves of babies from the end of the 14th century were also discovered, one of which was not according to the Christian rite. The graves were made hastily, which leads archaeologists to think that there were some extraordinary circumstances in the burial, perhaps an epidemic.
The archaeological team worked outside the fortress wall, but despite this, a number of movable finds were discovered – coins, arrowheads, lead seals and many more. etc.
In 2024, the excavations were carried out entirely with the funds of the Municipality of Kameno. For the first time, the Ministry of Culture did not support the excavations. Unfortunately, dozens of archaeological sites in Bulgaria are still in this situation due to the small amount of funds for archaeological research set in the national budget for 2024.
Therefore, the planned work cannot be carried out, as an effect of which is the delay in the design and implementation of conservation-restoration works.
The excavations of the Rusokastro fortress are organized and managed by the Regional Historical Museum – Burgas.
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