Abstract
From 2009â2015 on the Ada Tepe hill (495 m), south of the modern town of Krumovgrad in the Rhodope Mountains (southern Bulgaria), the remains of a Late Bronze Age gold mine with its adjacent settlement complexes and traces of later habitation were uncovered during rescue excavations. One of the most important questions about Ada Tepe gold mining concerns the origin of the exploitation and the type of organisation of the human presence on the hill. Different types of archaeological structures investigated during the excavations as well as the principles of their organisation provide us with a possibility for more detailed conclusions about the social structure, the inner organisation and the specialisation of the society, which subsisted on gold mining during the Late Bronze Age. This paper focuses on the northern quarter of the Ada Tepe, where remains of a settlement and workshops were documented, which were connected with the initial mining activities and extraction of the gold ore. The analysis of the features of the excavated structures and their stratigraphic position plays an important role in the chronological and functional interpretation of the site.
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