Foundations of a monastery and 190 graves found in Srem? This discovery is still shrouded in mystery

Photo: Mikica Ilic

When construction of the Kuzmin-Raca highway began, on a section near the river and the village of Bosut, close to Sremska Mitrovica, no one suspected that a significant discovery would be made. Exploring the site on the route itself, archaeologists from the Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments in Sremska Mitrovica discovered the foundations that are believed to belong to the medieval monastery dedicated to St. Anastasia.

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The director of the Institute, Ljubisa Sulaja, explains for Telegraf.rs how this important cultural monument was found.

"During the development of the Kuzmin-Raca highway design, we provided the conditions and anticipated exploration on three sites on the highway route. One of the sites was located in the area of ​​the village of Visnjiceva, one kilometer from the confluence of the Bosut and the Sava rivers. In accordance with these measures, before the start of works on the route, we carried out archaeological exploration. Some building from the antiquity was expected at that site, but what appeared during the excavation were the outlines of a church, so it turned out that there is a monumental church from the Middle Ages at that site, almost 30 meters long," says Sulaja.

The well-preserved foundations, an altar, a bell, graves, are just a part of what the archaeologists have found.

"This is a very massive building. A large number of tombs with well-preserved skeletons were found, together with all the small finds that accompany it, such as money, rings, etc... 190 graves have been found so far," adds Sulaja.

The findings about the site have not been completed yet, and, based on a handful of written traces, it is only assumed that this is the Monastery of St. Anastasia.

"The complete information about the site is not here yet, since the artifacts are to be processed now. So far, we have only some preliminary findings. It is evident that a church has been discovered, therefore, a medieval building. Since the Turkish conquests, ending in 1521, there has been almost no mention of it, nor written data. We found the only trace in Hungarian documents, dating back to the beginning of the 13th century, about the existence of the Monastery of St. Anastasia right at that location, on the banks of the Bosut."

Sulaja adds that there is also information that this is a Greek Orthodox monastery that was a part of the monastery of St. Demetrius located in present-day Sremska Mitrovica.

"The discovery of the remains from the graves that will be analyzed will date the period when the church lived its most active life. We found about 190 graves and now we are going to process the data and everything that comes after an archaeological exploration. All these results are not final, and only after processing all the findings we'll come to some much more significant and reliable information about the church, when we'll have some clearer and more accurate information."

Certainly, this interesting site is still shrouded in mystery, as is the fact that there has been no mention of it for hundreds of years.

(Telegraf.rs)