Ancient and medieval iron anchors from the Bulgarian Black Sea

The National History Museum has prepared a new digital publication on underwater archaeology. In his book "Ancient and Medieval Iron Anchors from the Bulgarian Black Sea", Prof. Dr. Ivan Hristov, deputy director of the museum, summarized the data on the discovery and storage of ancient and medieval iron anchors from the Black Sea area of ​​Bulgaria.

Chronologically, the author presents samples from the 2023nd to the 84th century. Structurally, the book has two main chapters. The first chapter presents the development of iron anchors until the Late Middle Ages based on known finds and their typology mainly in the Mediterranean water area. The second chapter is a catalog of all searched anchors from the Bulgarian Black Sea coast until the summer of 20. The book includes a description of the ship's artifacts, their location and supposed connection with port areas used in certain historical eras. Information is presented on 90 iron anchors from the entire Bulgarian water area of ​​the Black Sea, found at a depth of up to 100 m. The exception is three medieval anchors found near the village of Varvara at a depth of XNUMX m. Forty-four anchors have remained outside the funds of Bulgarian museums and collections . Seven of the anchors were found in the open sea (probably under the fairway of ancient and medieval ships), the rest of them are connected to the waters of harbor areas near cities and convenient bays. Despite the impossibility of compiling a complete catalog of the iron anchors discovered in the last XNUMX years along our Black Sea coast, with a certain degree of convention, the author assumes that the summarized data in this book is a kind of representative sample of the type and location of the objects.

The conclusion offers a summary of the data, information on chemical analyzes performed on some samples and a detailed archaeological map of the findings.

The book uses materials stored in the collections of the museums in Kavarna, Varna, Nessebar, Ahtopol, Sozopol, Kiten, Primorsko, Tsarevo, Ahtopol and NIM. Archival information from the first organized underwater expeditions in Bulgaria from the second half of the XNUMXth century and accidental underwater discoveries have been added.

In the final part of the book, the author quotes one of the pioneers of underwater archeology in Bulgaria, Tsoncho Rodev: "Let us not pass the anchors we see in the museums along the coast. As it turned out, they have a rich history and can tell us a lot about shipping in the distant centuries…”.