The dungeon tower in the Rusokastro fortress has been completely discovered

At the end of August 2020, the dungeon tower in the castle of the medieval town of Rusokastro was fully explored. It is 16 meters long and 11 meters wide. It is hexagonal in plan. Its walls are 1.9 meters wide. According to researchers, the tower was built in the late thirteenth century. In the 70s of the fourteenth century it was burned down.

The tower was built of extremely well carved stone blocks. The construction was literally perfect. Unfortunately, it is the beautiful stone blocks that have attracted the attention of the local population, who have used the ruins as a quarry for centuries. As a result, only a few stone blocks remain on the outside faces of the walls. The floor of the tower was carefully plastered with mortar. Here, on the first floor, was probably the basement, where various food products were stored. Researchers suggest that the tower was about 15-18 meters high, on three or four floors.



One of the greatest successes in the study of the site is the localization of a workshop for horn products, which was located on one of the floors of the tower. During the fire, part of the production slipped into the basement and has now been discovered by archaeologists. These are blanks and semi-finished products from calf horn, fallow deer and red deer. Several completely finished products were also found - horn needles, plate plates and a very valuable find - an almost completely finished whistle. Ethnographic parallels suggest that it was embedded in a wooden flute.

Unfortunately, almost to the floor of the tower, the cultural layer was depleted and discarded during the extraction of stones by treasure hunters and the construction of a military trench, built probably in the 80s of the twentieth century.
The archeological research is the work of RHM-Burgas and is funded for another year by the Municipality of Kameno and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Bulgaria.

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