An Early Bronze Age necropolis has been found in the vicinity of the southern Serbian city of Vranje. A team of experts from the Archeological Institute of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU) and the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade have discovered the necropolis. It is located at the Manište dig in the village of Ranutovac, three kilometers north of Vranje, on the route of Corridor 10.
     Aleksandar Bulatović, the coordinator of a project of archeological research and preservation on the Corridor X route - one of the pan-European corridors that runs between Salzburg in Austria and Thessaloniki in Greece - said the necropolis contained human remains who were burned in funeral pyres. "The necropolis dates back to the Early Bronze Age - based on our initial assessments between 2,000 and 1,800 BCE, and it is significant because it is the only fully preserved necropolis from this period in the central Balkans," he explained. "It is the most important discovery made to date on the Corridor X route," he added. "At the same site, we found multiple ceramic objects, which look quite unusual for this area, and several containers whose use is unknown," said Bulatović.
     The archeological material is being processed at the National Museum in Vranje, where it will later be exhibited. The Serbian section of Corridor X route, stretching from Grabovnica near Leskovac to Preševo on the Macedonian border, has 33 registered archeological sites, five of which are yet to be explored.

Edited from B92.net(16 June 2012)