ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS NEAR THE VILLAGE OF VELIKAN (Stanimir Stoichev – s_stoichev@mail.bg, Angel Angelov) Twelve Thracian pits of the Late Iron Age (5th – 1st centuries BC) were explored. Thirty-two dugouts, eight houses built in rubble masonry, 175 storage and midden pits were explored in the Mediaeval settlement, which destroyed significant part of the earlier occupation layers. The settlement existed during the 9th – 12th centuries and had three construction periods. At the beginning of the 13th century a Christian cemetery appeared on the already abandoned buildings of the settlement and it existed through the entire 13th century. Fifty-two graves were discovered and thus their total number reached 105. Reburials were documented in part of the graves and also, some of the burial pits overlapped. The ratio between men, women and children buried in the cemetery is approximately equal. Often the burial pits were fired before the funeral or charcoal was placed inside the burial pit, mostly around the head of the dead. The grave goods included bronze buttons and finger-rings. A child was buried in Grave No. 78 and a flint-studded threshing-board was placed over the body. The body of the dead in Grave No. 79 was cut in two and the two halves were placed one over other in anatomical order and oriented north – south.