ANCIENT MINING ON ADA TEPE HILL NEAR KRUMOVGRAD (Hristo Popov – popovhristo@yahoo.co.uk) The rescue archaeological excavations on the western slope of Ada Tepe aimed at discovering and registering traces of ancient mining and metallurgy. A mining gallery, 14 m in length, already known from the preliminary field survey, was explored. During the excavations, a small previously unknown branching of the gallery, 2.80 – 3 m in length, was discovered. The archaeological material is relatively small in number. Part of it, found in the deepest end of the gallery and under the mining waste piled in front of the entrance, is synchronous to the exploitation of the mine. There are no traces of human activity within the gallery after the ore deposits were finished. The pottery found in closed contexts date the mining to the Late Bronze Age (1500 – 1110 BC) or to the first phases of the Early Iron Age in the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, at latest. Sondages were carried out on the slopes of Ada Tepe. A great number of fragmentary millstones and stone pestles, which were used for ore pounding and grinding, in addition to Late Bronze and Early Iron Age sherds, were found in one sondage. The site is the earliest mine for extracting gold ore known in Bulgaria so far.