ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS OF A PIT SANCTUARY NEAR THE VILLAGE OF KAPITAN ANDREEVO (Hristo Popov – popovhristo@yahoo.co.uk) The site is located on a terrace above the Maritsa River. The excavations aimed at specifying the borders of the site and its features. The main part of the archaeological structures belonged to a pit sanctuary. Twenty ritual pits were explored. The pits come from different periods of the Iron Age: the early phase of the Early Iron Age (10th – 8th centuries BC), the transition period between the Early and the Late Iron Age (6th – mid 5th centuries BC), and the Early Hellenistic period (second half of the 4th – 3rd centuries BC). The typical pottery shapes include jugs, bowls, cups, pots and small dolia. A bronze pin with spiral-like head, which finds exact parallels in Itonia, Thessaly, and Drama, Thrace, and dates to the 9th – 8th century BC, deserves special attention among the finds. The pottery of the 6th – 5th centuries BC shows early wheel-made shapes. Fragmentary Greek amphorae were found in some pits, e.g. a bottom of an amphora from Chios that dates to the mid 5th century BC. A small open settlement was founded on the site during the Early Middle Ages. Three semi-dug sunken-floored houses were discovered during the excavations and two of them were entirely excavated. The present data from the excavations allow us to date the mediaeval settlement to the 7th – 8th centuries AD.