Арката
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Overview
About this site
Overview
Arkata (Арката) is a rock shelter in a limestone massif on the southern bank of the river Arda, near the village of Oreshari (Oreshare) in Kardzhali Province, Bulgaria. It lies at a height of 100 m, beside the bridge on the road to the village, and is an archaeological site with Late Palaeolithic finds.
Excavations since 2007 have recovered flint artefacts, animal bones and traces of hearths that point to occupation by a community that made its tools on the spot from local flint.
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Article
Арката
Arkata itself lies in a large carbonate lens in the Eocene sequence on the right bank of the river.
SettingSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Bulgarian): Арката (Орешари)CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Bulgarian): Арката (Орешари)CC BY-SA 4.0
The site lies within the protected area Oreshari. The region has the hilly to low-mountain relief typical of the Eastern Rhodopes, and the surrounding terrain consists of Upper and Middle Eocene sedimentary, sedimentary-volcanic and terrigenous rocks. Arkata itself lies in a large carbonate lens in the Eocene sequence on the right bank of the river.
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Bulgarian): Арката (Орешари)CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Bulgarian): Арката (Орешари)CC BY-SA 4.0
The shelter is in the western part of a limestone massif and faces north. On the opposite bank of the Arda lie the Kovan kaya massif (from Turkish, Bee Stone), covered with trapezoidal niches cut into the rock, the rock massif Hambar kaya with rock-cut structures, and the Thracian sanctuary Gradishteto. Along the massif, at the level of the shelter, eight small caves and shelter-type caves are formed from west to east. In Arkata itself there is a cave and several rock niches that form shelters. The shelter measures about 80 × 30 m.
ExcavationsSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Bulgarian): Арката (Орешари)CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Bulgarian): Арката (Орешари)CC BY-SA 4.0
Serious scientific investigation began in 2007, when an interdisciplinary team led by Assoc. Prof. Stefanka Ivanova and Maria Gyurova started archaeological research at the site.
In the 2008 season, traces of very early occupation from the Old Stone Age were exposed for the first time in the Eastern Rhodopes. A small test trench was dug in a niche in the eastern part of the shelter. In an area of 3 – 4 m², to a depth of about 0.6 – 0.8 m, more than 100 flint artefacts, bones and traces of hearths were found. The assemblage was assigned on technical and typological grounds to the Late Palaeolithic and shows the technique of producing blades, bladelets and microblades characteristic of that period (40 000 – 10 000 BC).
In the 2009 season, Cave 5 and Cave 7 were investigated and Late Palaeolithic artefacts were found. The flint assemblage from Cave 7 numbers 62 artefacts, including 7 pieces bearing traces of testing of the raw material, 4 flake cores, 33 flakes, 12 blades, 5 pieces of waste and only 1 tool, an atypical scraper on a flake. The caves in the investigated area were used as dwellings in the late and probably the middle Palaeolithic, and were also actively used in the early Holocene.
FindsSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Bulgarian): Арката (Орешари)CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Bulgarian): Арката (Орешари)CC BY-SA 4.0
The cores from the 2008 trench comprise two pre-cores and two cores. The tools are represented by four artefacts: a core-like tool, a multiple burin, a scraper and a fragmentary Gravette point. The group of semi-finished products contains 78 blades, whole, tip, base and middle sections. The larger blades show traces of core preparation or result from the initial working of a core. Only a few come from two-platform cores; the rest come from single-platform cores. Working was done mainly with a soft hammer.
The excavators concluded that Arkata was inhabited in the Late Palaeolithic by a community that made the tools it needed on the spot from local flint, and much of the raw material was taken from the bank of the Arda. A representative sample of the flint assemblage underwent use-wear analysis with a Kayence VHX-100k digital microscope at 50x and 100x magnification, at the National Archaeological Institute with Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The artefacts proved to be very well preserved, with fresh edges suitable for such analysis and no visible post-depositional alteration of the surfaces.
The character of the assemblage allows it to be assigned to the Gravettian techno-cultural complex of the Late Palaeolithic, which is well represented in Bulgaria. The initial conclusions were supported by the faunal analysis of Dr N. Spasov. On the basis of several identifiable bone fragments, two large mammal species of Late Pleistocene age were identified: cf. Bison priscus and Equus germanicus. The same researcher assigned remains of domestic and wild animals (cattle and red deer) to the higher, Holocene level.
ContextSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Bulgarian): Арката (Орешари)CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Bulgarian): Арката (Орешари)CC BY-SA 4.0
In the Eastern Rhodope and Strandzha mountains of Bulgaria, rocks have been cut, carved and used as sanctuaries for thousands of years. The Thracians were an Indo-European-speaking people who inhabited large parts of south-eastern Europe in ancient times, including modern Bulgaria, and they reused many such sites.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Thracian rock sanctuaries of Bulgaria
In the Eastern Rhodope and Strandzha mountains of Bulgaria, rocks have been cut, carved and used as sanctuaries for thousands of years, and the Atlas lists many of them as "megaliths". The Thracians were an Indo-European-speaking people who inhabited large parts of south-eastern Europe in ancient times, including modern Bulgaria, Romania, North Macedonia, northern Greece and European Turkey, and they reused many of the sites. Strandzha has a large concentration of ruins of Thracian sanctuaries, sacrificial altars and dolmens.
Perperikon, in the Eastern Rhodope Mountains 15 kilometres north-east of Kardzhali, is an ancient Thracian city on a rocky hill 470 metres high, thought to have been a sacred place; it is described as the largest megalith ensemble site in the Balkans. In the Middle Ages it served as a fortress. Beglik Tash, a prehistoric rock sanctuary on the southern Black Sea coast north of Primorsko, was reused by Thracian tribes in the Iron Age.
Many of the places listed as megaliths here are natural rock formations. Beglik Tash is a natural rock formation of megaliths of hardened magma, from a volcano of the Mesozoic era; most of the megaliths have traces of carving for Thracian rituals, and there are the remains of a labyrinth and a "Thracian sun-clock" formed of huge stones, as well as a 150-ton rock. It is often hard to tell where nature ends and human work begins.
Dating depends on the finds in the few excavated parts, and most sites are listed with a broad range.
When visiting, look for traces of carving on the rock, and for steps and niches.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Thracians, Wikipedia: Perperikon, Wikipedia: Beglik Tash, Wikipedia: Strandzha · CC BY-SA 4.0
Where it stands
Bulgaria
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 41°36′36″ N, 25°43′16″ EFor a GPS or map app: 41.61000, 25.72100
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
1 source behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q65944107wikidata.org
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Арката (Орешари)" (Bulgarian), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; authors are listed in the page history. Reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikipedia · Edit history and authors
- Wikipedia (Bulgarian): Арката (Орешари)CC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikidata Q65944107CC0