Fortress at Cape St Athanasius

The site at Cape St Athanasius is a multilayered archaeological complex containing remains and artefacts from different historical periods. The earliest finds, including stone and copper axeheads, copper arrowheads and awls, date to the Late Chalcolithic, in the fifth millennium BC, or the Early Bronze Age, from the late fourth to the third millennium BC.
In the southeastern part of the cape, 140 ritual pits, several sacrificial hearths and pottery fragments from Archaic Greece have been discovered. Thracian material from the Classical to the Late Hellenistic period has also been found. During the Thracian period a stone wall with an entrance and a Thracian temple were built on the cape, remaining in use from the fourth century BC to the first century AD.
Remains from the Roman period include a pottery kiln, fragments of rejected vessels, coins, marble statuettes, sculptural compositions and a votive tablet or relief depicting the labours of Heracles.
Archaeological research at the site also extends to the medieval period, with around ten fragments of sgraffito pottery and several coins from the fourteenth–seventeenth centuries discovered. Cape St Athanasius is also associated with the Early Christian basilica situated within the old fortress, regarded as Late Antique, or Early Byzantine, and part of the extensive military defensive system built under the Byzantine emperors Anastasius and Justinian I. Enclosing approximately forty decares, this defensive line includes a fortress wall and a ditch in front of it; traces of barracks have also been identified near the southern section of the wall.