Justice M.M. Sundresh and Justice N. Sathish Kumar of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court inspected the excavation site at Keezhadi near Madurai on Tuesday, in connection with a public interest litigation that the two-judge Bench has been hearing with regard to the preservation of the excavated artefacts, the construction of an on-site museum and a few other issues related to the excavation.
The judges enquired about the progress made thus far in the excavation, which is being carried out since 2015 at the site, the different types of artefacts excavated so far, the consequent inferences made about the history of the place, and the procedures adopted by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) for excavation, analysis and preservation of artefacts.
Explaining the details to the judges, P.S. Sriraman, Superintending Archaeologist, Excavations Branch (Bangalore), ASI, said that the excavations so far had indicated that intensive human habitation in the area was roughly about 40 to 50 acres in size.
He, however, told the judges that the artefacts found so far have not given any clear indication about the type of settlement, i.e. whether it was urban or industrial. He said that while the charcoal sample sent earlier for carbon dating had fixed the time of settlement at around 200 B.C., a charcoal sample collected near a fragmentary wall during the ongoing third season of excavation, in a layer below the earlier excavated level, could push the time further behind by a century or two.
He also explained the difficulties in excavating the roughly 100-acre earmarked site at Keezhadi, of which only around 2,500 square metres have been excavated so far, since it was agricultural land owned by farmers in the area.