ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS NEAR THE VILLAGE OF VELIKAN (Yanko Dimitrov – yanko_aim@mail.bg, Evgenia Komatarova–Balinova, Petar Dimitrov) Seventeen houses with one or two rooms of the 11th – 12th centuries were explored. Their walls were up to 1.05 m wide, built of uneven or roughly-cut stones bonded with mud. The Large Building measured 10/12.80 m by 10/12.30 m and had six rooms. Several sgraffito dishes were found in the building. Twenty-four dugouts with stone stoves of the 11th – 12th centuries were explored and 198 storage and midden pits were documented on the site. Fifty-four Christian graves were discovered as well. Neolithic, Early Bronze Age, Hellenistic and Roman sherds were found on the site. Other finds from the Roman period included a bronze fibula, sherds from red-gloss pottery and bronze coins from Claudius to the Constantinian dynasty.