ARCHEOLOGICAL STUDIES ON THE TERRITORY OF THE VRATSA DISTRICT
The earliest partial evidence of the archaeological monuments in the territory of the Vratsa district was provided by the Count Luigi Marsigli in the middle of the 19th c.. More detailed studies were made by Felix Kanitz in the second half of the 19th c.. He specifically pointed out the archaeological sites at Lyuti Brod, Vratzata and the medieval stronghold Kamaka near the town of Oryahovo. The actual archaeological investigations were made at the very end of the 19th c. by Karel Skorpil. He documented the layouts of five of the strongholds of The Danube Limes (pronounced “lee-mays” which was the border of the Roman Empire), located within the territory of the district. These five strongholds are: Regiana near the town of Kozloduy, Augusta near the village of Harlets, Variana near the village of Leskovets, Pedoniana near the village of Ostrov, and Valeriana near the village of Dolni Vadin.
The first archaeological excavations were organized by an archaeological group affiliated with “Razvitie” on a Thracian hill in the Medkovets quarter in 1926. In the 1930s and 1940s, a medieval church in the Koriten Grad locality, near the village of Lyuti Brod was studied, along with a rock church near Vratzata, where an old-Bulgarian inscription was found reading “Vratitsa”.
In 1946, the famous Bulgarian archaeologist, Vasil Mikov carried out an experimental investigation of a late-Chalcolithic settlement in the Tepeto locality near the town of Krivodol. There a new archaeological culture was discovered which was subsequently named after the settlement.
After it was established as a state institution in 1953, the museum commenced systematic archaeological excavations with the following focuses:
- The Paleolithic Age
- The Neolithic Age
- The Stone and Copper Ages
- The Thracian Period (Bronze Age and Iron Age)
- The Roman and Byzantine Periods
- The Bulgarian Middle Ages.