The traveling exhibition “New Horizons in Prehistory. 50 years since the opening of the Varna Necropolis” of the Varna History Museum will be opened at 4:30 p.m. on December 1 /Friday/ in one of the halls on the second floor of the Interactive Museum of the Regional History Museum – Razgrad.
The exhibition includes 12 panels representing the Varna Necropolis and a display case with flint artifacts from the flint production center in the villages of Ravno and Kamenovo.
In October 1972, a necropolis from the Late Stone-Copper Age (4600-4350 BC) was accidentally discovered in the Western Industrial Zone of Varna. Its excavations were carried out until 1991. An area of 6,500 square meters was studied. 308 graves, 12 collective finds and 110 individual objects were discovered.
Of the various and numerous burial gifts in the Varna Necropolis, 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, no similar concentration of gold items is 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, which is also confirmed by the large number of copper objects.
Towards the end of the Neolithic and especially during the Stone-Copper Age, processes of integration, production specialization and social stratification matured in the prehistoric societies inhabiting Southeast Europe. One of these processes is the standardization of the production of flint tools, there is also a drive to use the best quality raw materials and the production of extremely long flint plates. For example, in the richest graves of the Varna Necropolis, along with the earliest accumulation of massive gold objects, super plates with dimensions over 40 cm are found. blanks were mined for the longest and most prestigious super plates, from which it is assumed that the plates in the Varna Necropolis. This deposit is in the area of the village of Ravno near Razgrad, and the production workshops are in the neighboring village of Kamenovo
Half a century after the find by Lake Varna, in 2021, after a thirty-year hiatus, the Regional History Museum – Varna resumed 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. Advances in genetics, paleodietology, and other modern disciplines will be used to aid archeology in helping us better understand our ancestors, who bequeathed us the world’s earliest gold and copper artifacts. The current traveling exhibition was organized for this purpose.
