RESCUE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS NEAR THE VILLAGE OF RUPKITE (Dimitar Yankov – dimiter_yankov@yahoo.com, Petar Kalchev) The site is located near the Roman mansio Carasura. One hundred and twenty-eight graves were explored. The burials belong to different periods. One grave comes from the Late Chalcolithic period (end of the 5th millennium BC). The burial is an inhumation in a Hocker position and there is a stone axe-hammer with bone handle as a grave good. Thirty-six graves date to the end of the 5th and the 6th century AD and belong to Barbarians who were Byzantine federates. The burials are inhumations according to the Christian funerary ritual. The deceased were placed in rectangular pits covered with stones or with timber beams. The grave goods include bronze buckles, jewellery, an iron sword, a helmet, chain armour, a spear-head, a knife, a horse-bit, pottery, etc. Eight Christian graves date to the end of the 10th – 12th centuries. The grave goods include bronze earrings and finger rings. Sixteen graves come from the late mediaeval period, after the 12th century. The other graves date to the 17th – 18th centuries. Ten pits were explored: one of them dates to the Bronze Age, two date to the Late Iron Age (5th – 1st centuries BC) and the other date to the Middle Ages. Remains of three mediaeval houses, four pits for garbage, a pottery kiln of the Late Iron Age and a ritual pit of the 3rd – 1st centuries BC containing sherds and a terracotta altar were also discovered.