The Keezhadi archaeological site in Sivaganga. File
| Photo Credit: S. James
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has asked archaeologist Amarnath Ramakrishna, who unearthed an ancient civilisation in Keezhadi near Madurai, to resubmit his report about the excavation after making necessary corrections for taking further action.
A letter from the ASI said two experts had suggested corrections in the report submitted by Mr. Ramakrishna, who was in charge of the excavation, to make it “more authentic.”
Mr. Ramakrishna, who conducted extensive digging that began in 2014, studied the ancientness of the objects through Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) and prepared a 982-page report. Carbon dating of charcoal found at the Keezhadi site in February 2017 established that the settlement there belonged to 200 BC. Several artefacts discovered during the excavation pointed to the existence of an urban civilisation in Tamil Nadu since the Sangam Age.
Mr. Ramakrishna sent it to the Director General of ASI on January 30, 2023. Earlier, before he could send his report, Mr. Ramakrishna was transferred to Assam in 2017 and now, he is working as Director, Antiquities. After more than two years since the report was submitted, the ASI has asked him to rewrite his report.
According to the ASI, three periods require proper nomenclature or re-orientation, and the time bracket of 8th century BCE to 5th century BCE for Period I requires concrete justification.
“The other two periods also must be determined based on scientific AMS dates and the material recovered with stratigraphical details. The date of the earliest period, in the present state of our knowledge, appears to be very early. It can be, at the maximum, somewhere in pre-300 BCE,” said the ASI.
It had informed Mr. Ramakrishna that only mentioning depth for the available scientific dates was not enough; the layer number should also be marked for comparative consistency analysis.
“The submitted maps may be replaced with better ones; the village map lacks clarity, some plates are missing; plan, contour map, stratigraphy drawing, drawings are missing; and a plan/map giving the location of the trenches/cuttings is required,” according to the letter from the ASI to Mr. Ramakrishna.
‘Unprecedented decision’
When his opinion was sought, former IAS officer R. Balakrishnan, who authored the book Journey of a Civilisation: Indus to Vaigai, said the decision of the ASI seemed to be “unprecedented” and obviously a result of the “pressure of history.”
“Not digging adequately is considered a tragedy, not letting the reports come out is a greater tragedy. It is simply pathetic,” he said.
Reiterating that history was not a frozen snow, but a flowing river, Mr. Balakrishnan, formerly Additional Chief Secretary of Odisha, said the treatment of southern archaeology by the ASI has consistently been far from satisfactory. “We have been seeing a clear bias. In a multicultural country like India, history requires careful and responsible handling,” he said.
He noted that no one touched Adichanallur for 100 years after Alexander Rea, the British archaeologist. “The Adichanallur report by T. Sathyamoorthy did not see the light of day for 15 years until the intervention of the court. Now, the same thing has happened to Keezhadi. The delay in publishing the reports of Mr. Sathyamoorthy and Mr. Ramakrishna is a cause of concern,” he said.
Published – May 22, 2025 04:08 pm IST