Archaeologist Dilen Dilov opened in one of the rooms on the second floor of the Interactive Museum of the Regional History Museum in Razgrad the traveling exhibition “New Horizons in Prehistory. 50 years since the opening of the Varna Necropolis”.
The exhibition includes 12 information boards presenting the Varna Necropolis and is complemented by a display case with artifacts from the flint production center in the villages of Ravno and Kamenovo – part of the museum’s collection in the capital of Ludogoriets.
In October 1972, a necropolis from the Late Stone-Copper Age (4600-4350 BC) was accidentally discovered in the Western Industrial Zone of Varna. An area of 6,500 square meters was explored. 308 graves, 12 collective finds and 110 individual objects were discovered. Of the various and numerous grave goods, the most intriguing are the gold objects – over 3,000 and weighing more than six kilograms in total. They were found in only 62 graves, and the weight of those found in only four of them was over 5 kg. So far – for the 5th millennium BC, a similar concentration of gold articles is not known elsewhere. This, as well as the presence of a number of types of products that are not found elsewhere, allow scientists to assume that a production center for metal processing functioned in the area around today’s Varna.
To process them, flint tools were needed, and they were unique. In one of the richest graves of the Varna Necropolis, along with the gold objects, super flint plates with dimensions over 40 cm are found. After many years of field research, only one deposit has been found in Bulgaria, from which blanks for of them – it is in the area of the village of Ravno near Razgrad, and the production workshops are in the neighboring village of Kamenovo, emphasized the connection with the finds from the necropolis and the production center in Razgrad area Dilen Dilov.
Half a century after the discovery by Lake Varna, the Regional History Museum – Varna has renewed the study of the Varna Necropolis. Scientists hope that with the help of the new interdisciplinary methods, they will be able to reveal more details about the extinct community and details about the social structure and relationships back then. And that is the idea of this traveling exhibition, the archaeologist explained.
In her welcome to those who came to the opening of the exhibition, the director of RHM-Razgrad Tanya Todorova emphasized that this exhibition is another in the already established practice of her colleagues not to miss an opportunity to present to the residents and guests of the capital of the Ludogorie various examples of our rich movable cultural and historical heritage and, if possible, to look for and show its connection with the Razgrad region in the past. Both in this exhibition and in the exhibition “From Saint Nicholas to Santa Claus”, which will be opened in the Ethnographic Museum on Monday /December 4/ at 5:00 p.m. There, along with the legends and traditions about St. Nicholas and its development to Santa Claus, there is a special corner for the Orthodox church “St. Nicholas the Wonderworker” in Razgrad.
