Post by UKarchaeology on Jan 29, 2016 17:44:50 GMT
A 7,000-year-old defensive, i.e. fortress wall has been discovered by archaeologists during the 2015 excavations of a prehistoric settlement mound near Hotnitsa, Veliko Tarnovo Municipality, in Central North Bulgaria, which dates back to the Chalcolithic (Aenolithic, Copper Age).
The newly found prehistoric fortress wall in Bulgaria’s Hotnitsa is made of wooden pillars, 40 cm in diameter each, which were plastered with clay on both sides.
The wall was about 80 cm wide, and probably up to 3 meters tall. It encircled the entire prehistoric settlement, which itself had a diameter of 50 meters. The defensive wall existed for a period of 1,000 years, the archaeologists’ finding indicate.
The prehistoric fortress wall has been discovered by the team of archaeologists Assoc. Prof. Stefan Chohadzhiev from Veliko Tarnovo University “St. Cyril and St. Methodius" and his son, Alexander Chohadzhiev from the Veliko Tarnovo Regional Museum of History, reports local daily Yantra Dnes.
Undergraduate and graduate archaeology students from Veliko Tarnovo University have participated actively in the excavations.
The prehistoric settlement in Bulgaria’s Hotnitsa, which was inhabited in the 5th-4th millennium BC, is also known for the Hotnitsa Gold Treasure which dates back to the same period as the gold treasure from the Varna Chalcolithic Necropolis in Bulgaria’s Black Sea city of Varna. The Varna Gold Treasure is known as the world’s oldest gold but the Hotnitsa Gold Treasure is said to be just as old.
The discovery of the Chalcolithic fortress wall in the southern part of the Hotnitsa settlement mound “is the result of 8 years of excavations", the report says.
“I hope that in the following years we will continue to research in depth this section because the fortress wall was moved with the expansion or shrinking of the settlement, and was maintained the entire time by its residents," archaeologist Alexander Chohadzhiev is quoted as saying.
“This discovery is very important for us because the period of the Copper-Stone Age is usually associated with peaceful existence whereas now it turns out that this was not the case. There were no major battles, of course, but there probably was some kind of a local conflict because we found two arrows by the wall," he elaborates.
In addition to the defensive wall surrounding the Chalcolithic settlement in Hotnitsa, the archaeologists have also unearthed a burned home with well preserved charred wood from the walls, floor, and the casing of what was a window or a door.
“The jointing of the individual wooden elements is very visible. I am dazzled by these people’s ability to process wood in such a precise way, and only using stone tools," Chohadzhiev Jr. says.
Full story: archaeologyinbulgaria.com/2016/01/21/archaeologists-discover-7000-year-old-fortress-wall-in-prehistoric-settlement-near-bulgarias-hotnitsa/