22 June 2009 | With the successful conclusion of the second archaeological excavation campaign of the Kastel site Skopje, archaeologists announced several important findings.
Good results were discovered at four main points of the site, located 26 kilometres southeast of the capital near the Pcinja River, Kiril Traykovski, who led the Museum of Macedonia archaeological team, told Utrinksi Vesnik today.

They were: “at the actual summit of the fortress, at the middle part of the remains of the discovered church, in the cave – monastic cell (which was previously thought to be a natural phenomenon) and in the commercial and residential areas of one of the castle’s sides.

The results so far suggest that it is highly possible that in the remains of the church was located a monastery, which was recorded in the imperial documents, now kept in the Russian St. Panteleymon Monastery on Mount Athos.

According to a document from the fourteenth century, the Metropolitan Jacob of Serres received the monastery and its surrounding territory as an imperial gift. Archaeologists think that he most likely spent his last years in the monastic cell.

The experts explained the origins and importance of the Kastel Fortress to the publication: “At around 3,500 BC, the nameless inhabitants of this minor settlement were forced to erect fortification walls in order to protect themselves from conquerors from the north. Whether those farmers and goat breeders from nearby the Pcinja belonged to the Brigit tribes or were similar to them culturally has not been recorded. As one of the northwest and border settlements towards Dardania, the Paeonic settlement near the Pcinja certainly depended administratively on the urban centre of Bilazora, built 20 kilometres to the east of Kastel.”

Little is known about the period from fourth to second centuries BC and the Roman period up to the fourth century AD, the experts added.

As a fortress, the settlement had strategic importance between the sixth and the seventh centuries because of the control over the ancient mediaeval road between Thessalonica (Thessaloniki) and Skupi (Skopje).

According to the publication, it is believed that Christian inhabitants erected a church building in the fortress, towards the west area overlooking the cliffs where they prayed until the first decades of the seventh century when the fortress was conquered by Barbarian tribes from the north. Reconstruction of the Byzantine Empire in the eleventh century restored the fortress’s importance and its active life is thought to have been uninterrupted until the area became part of the Ottoman Empire in the fourteenth century. Remains of a church with fresco painting fragments belonging to the twelfth to thirteenth centuries have been unearthed in the utmost western part of the area.

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