Anakkara excavation

        Historian Romila Thapar examining the Anakkara excavation site on may 20, 2008.

PALAKKAD: The archaeological excavation at Anakkara in the district gave evidences of first excavated Iron Age habitation-cum-burial site in Kerala.

In the ongoing excavation taken up as part of South Indian historical atlas project by P.M. Rajan Gurukkal, Director of School of Social Science, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, different megalithic objects such as Kodakkal, stone circle and burial urns, and iron implements were found.

Prof. Gurukkal said that Anakkara is the first excavated Iron Age habitation-cum-burial site in Kerala. The burial urns are secondary in nature which yielded typical megalithic pottery like black and red bowls, coarse red pots, iron implements including a trident and oil lamp and lot of bone fragments.

Kodakkals are usually found as commemorative tombstones without burial remains. But at this site a typical megalithic burial assemblage like pots, iron implements and bones are found inside it.

“Interior of the stone circle is divided into three chambers using granite boulders. In this, two chambers were excavated and in each chamber large burial urns with burial goods like iron implements, bone and pots were noticed.

Special features of the burials are the occurrence of a hanging lamp and the burial goods were found kept in the river sand at the bottom of the urn, possibly indicating some sort of rituals associated with riverbanks.”

Romila Thapar, historian and Emeritus Professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, who visited the excavation site on Sunday, said that “this may imply repeated use of burial urns.”

The most important feature of Anakkara site is the presence of small fragments of pottery used in day to day life and iron arrowhead and charcoal fragments in the soil layers below the burials, which indicate clear human habitation.

So far in Kerala as well as in South India, the absence or paucity of Iron Age habitation site was considered as a major research issue, said archaeologist K.P. Shajan.

On the laterite table lands in and around Anakkara, a number of post holes and quarry marks and burials indicating human habitation were found.

Another important finding is quartz microliths or Mesolithic tools found on the tableland and also in the bottom-most soil layers below the burials in the excavated areas.

All this evidences establish Anakkara as an Iron Age habitation site, he said. Carbon dating of charcoal fragments and physical anthropological studies of bones would give more information on the chronology and life pattern of people lived in this area.