ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS IN MESAMBRIA (Petya Kiyashkina – kiyashkina_p@abv.bg, Todor Marvakov, Stoyanka Dimova) Nineteen Hellenistic graves dated from the end of the 4th to 2nd centuries BC were explored. Two types of graves were registered. The cist graves were built and covered with ashlars. The cists consist of one burial chamber, or two burial chambers, or are situated in groups. The grave goods, which were not looted, include ceramic jugs and lacrimaria, a funerary wreath, a gold earring, gold beads, a gold necklace and a gold finger-ring. The pit graves contained inhumation burials. Grave No. 23 is the earliest one and dates to the end of the 4th – beginning of the 3rd century BC. The grave goods include a posthumous drachma of Alexander the Great, a gold necklace, a pair of gold earrings, a terracotta figurine of Kybele, ceramic lacrimaria and a jug. A coin of Mesambria, a bronze mirror, a bone pin, a glass amphoriskos, terracotta figurines showing a female personage and Nike, ceramic lacrimaria and an anthropomorphic glass bead were found in Grave No. 1. Grave No. 46 contained bored bronze coins (four minted in Mesambria and three Macedonian), which had circulated for an extended period. The burial was performed in the beginning of the 2nd century BC. The grave goods include a bronze finger-ring, an earring, a fibula, two necklaces of beads, a ceramic lacrimarium and a Megarian bowl. The grave goods in Grave No. 64 include gold earrings, a gold bead, gilded glass beads, a bronze bracelet, a ceramic bowl, a jug and a lacrimarium, and a bronze coin of Mesambria. Ten Early Byzantine Christian pit graves of the 7th century AD were explored. Two graves contained bronze buckles, one of them of the Balgota type dated to the first half of the 7th century AD. Twenty-five Christian pit graves without grave goods, dated to the 8th – 13th centuries, were explored. Twenty Muslim graves of the 17th – 19th centuries, without grave goods, were discovered.