CHERVEN (Svetlana Velikova – svetlanavelikova@abv.bg) The explorations of Church no. 16 continued. Its walls were 80 – 90 cm wide, built of ashlars bonded with mortar and preserved up to 1.60 m in height. The church was 12.80 m long and its western façade was 6.70 m wide. There were pseudo-constructive decorative niches on the façades, 1.30 m wide and 10 cm deep. The nave was 5.33 m long and 5.10 m wide. The floor was plastered with mortar. A bench cut out in the bedrock was discovered along the northern wall. A second entrance was discovered on the northern wall; it was subsequently walled. The church had a single apse. Fragmentary frescoes were preserved on the inner sides of the walls: mainly parts from the decoration of the plinth and the lower frieze in the apse (painted drapery) and on the southern wall of the nave (the feet of military saints). Seven burial chambers cut into the bedrock were discovered in the nave, two from the outer southern side of the church and one from the outer northern side. A significant number of fragmentary human bones were found above the bodies buried in the nave, indicating that the graves were reused multiple times. A number of copper and silver spherical buttons and two gilded silver earrings were found. During the excavations, 80 coins were discovered. The church dated to the first decades of the 14th century. There were later walls of the end of the 14th – beginning of the 15th century around the church.