Underwater archaeological excavations in the bay in front of the mouth of the Ropotamo river

The main task in the 2020 was to complete the excavation of the EBA layer in grid-square T4 (fig. 1). The EBA layer was investigated at a depth from –4.2/4.5 m to –5.2/5.5 m from the sea surface and consists of marine sediments with EBA archaeological materials. Under the EBA strata, there is a flat layer of homogeneous gray clay, about 0.8 – 0.10 m thick. This sterile sediment is deposited on top of hard sandy brown-yellow soil, which has the character of ancient dry land (figs. 2-3). The section of the EBA settlement excavated in grid-square T4 was built on dry land, at the level of the gray mud, –5.2/5.6 m below the present-day sea surface. The buildings in T4 are pile dwellings with habitation platforms. Stratigraphic observations show that the settlement was flooded by the sea during its existence, and the space between the piles was relatively quickly blocked by sea sediment. During the subsequent destruction of the platforms, they collapsed and formed a level with abundant EBA archaeological materials at a depth from –4.4/4.7 m to –4.8/5.1 m. In 2020, for the first time in the Black Sea, at a depth between –5.3/5.6 m and –5.8/6.1 m, materials from the Late Neolithic were discovered. They are dated to Aşağı Pınar 3, Karanovo III/IV or the beginning of Karanovo IV (fig. 4). Probably the Neolithic finds originate from a settlement that was entirely on dry land and should be sought to the north (towards the coast) from grid-squares T1, T2 – T3 and T4