It is a tiring process. Drink a bottle of water before you begin,” Suresh cautioned me. I was sitting inside a burial trench. Victor Gnanaraj, seated next to me, handed me a small pickaxe. “Turn the axe to the right and start scraping. Be careful, sir. You shouldn’t damage the offering pots or other artefacts,” Suresh instructed me.
The burial trench was located in Kilnamandi, a nondescript village in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvannamalai district. It is the latest site of interest on the state’s growing archaeological map. Excavations at Kilnamandi began on April 6. I joined Gnanaraj, director of excavations; Suresh, excavation in-charge; and research scholars, Rajasekar and John Juvan, for two days in mid-May. At 41°C, it was searingly hot.
I alternated between a small knife and a small pickaxe. “Keep wiping your sweat,” Suresh reminded me as beads of perspiration landed on my legs. I unearthed some material only to be told it was a root! It took me 10 minutes to scrape an offering pot without any damage. I was pleased.
Fourteen labourers — four men and 10 women — were accompanying us to dig a 55-acre land parcel owned by the state government. It was formerly a stone quarry. The site was far away from any human settlement. There was no movement of vehicles or villagers. I could hear the birds loud and clear. I asked Poongavanam, one of the labourers, if he knew why they were digging. “Someone has buried a treasure,” he said, smiling.
In reality, archaeologists were here to collect more evidence of the Megalithic Period (2500 BC to AD 200) in Tamil Nadu. A distinct feature of the period was massive stone burial sites or commemorative memorials, believed to be the earliest surviving man-made structures. The excavation will also look for clues linking the Stone Age and the Iron Age.
Site scouting
A day before, under a thatched roof built to escape the heat, I asked Gnanaraj why they chose Kilnamandi for archaeological excavations.
S Balamurugan, a government officer, had alerted them after preliminary studies. As many as 33 stone grooves in and around Kilnamandi hinted at the possibility of polished stone axe manufacturing. “Tool making must have been common. We also found dolerite flakes on cairn heaps (stones piled up as a memorial or landmark),” Gnanaraj said. Surface indicators also pointed to stone circle burials with capstones. “This site could have 50 burials. We have dug six so far,” he informed me.
But in most cases, laypersons come across potsherds (broken pieces of pottery) or other ancient artefacts and alert the agencies. The awareness about archaeological excavations has grown in Tamil Nadu after the discovery of Keeladi, a hamlet near Madurai, in 2014. Ring wells, iron knives and dagger, copper pendants and 18,000 artefacts were found, establishing the presence of an urban, industrialised society on the banks of River Vaigai during the Sangam era, which is at least 2,600 years old.
Historical literature and topographical maps can also yield a site’s archaeological potential. The present-day Tiruvannamalai district, under which Kilnamandi falls, finds rich mentions in the Sangam literature. It is home to temples and mandapams built by the Pallavas, Cholas, and the Vijayanagara Empire, and an impressive Gingee fort. It also saw pre-Independence battles like the 1760 Arni War.
The recovery of a sarcophagus — a coffin of terracotta, adorned with capstones, sculptures and inscription — from Magamai Thirumani village in 2019 became one of the first pieces of evidence of the Megalithic culture in the district.
Archaeologists also conduct exploration, surveys (pedestal, transect and grid), and geomorphological tests to scout sites. “Sometimes, we do trial trenching,” Suresh pitched in.
Trench talk
We were ready for the site tour. “We will show you how the layout for an excavation trench is made. Then we will visit the trenches that have been dug and a habitation site. We also have a surprise for you before we break for lunch,” Gnanaraj said. “What is it?” I quizzed. He asked me to be patient and drink lots of water.
Armed with a measuring tape, iron rods, and wooden pegs, we reached a stone circle mound. Handing the measuring tape to Suresh, Gnanaraj asked him to mark the diameter of the stone circle to fix the north-south-east-west orientation. This is the first step in any excavation, Gnanaraj said.
“The length is 11 metres, so the centre should be 5.5 metres,” Suresh told Gnanaraj and fixed an iron rod as a marker on one end. Juvan ran to the other end to fix another marker-rod. Moving a bit to his right, Gnanaraj used the compass app on his mobile phone and declared it was north. This time, the diameter reading came to 12 metres. “Shall we fix it?” Rajasekar asked Gnanaraj. “Yes, at 12 metres. Let’s finish it off,” the latter said. Barely an hour had passed when Rajasekar said, “The heat is unbearable. I feel like drinking water all the time.” Juvan then picked up four wooden pegs, fixed them in four directions, and painted them white and black. Next, the trench was numbered as Meg 1 — Meg is short for Megalithic.
Old is gold?
As the team was fixing the layout, a middle-aged man walked up to them and fired questions at them for 10 minutes straight. “Will this excavation bring better roads and facilities to the village?” being one.
“Did he come with you?”, Juvan asked me. “No. I thought he was working here,” I said. We learnt that the man was from a near-by village. “I came to see what work is going on,” the man told a female labourer. “Now that you have seen, please don’t interrupt,” the visibly irritated woman told him. When he didn’t budge, the women dragged him out.
Such interruptions are common. “The mindset of local people is that the main purpose of the excavation is to find treasures buried under the earth. Our priority is to explain to them patiently what an archaeological excavation is,” Gnanaraj said.
They also show the unearthed artefacts to the locals. Sometimes, they organise an exhibition. “It is their land. We have a moral obligation to tell them. We also ask them to protect the site from vandals,” an official from the state archaeology department told me later.
K Amarnath Ramakrishna, the archaeologist who discovered Keeladi, recalled how people brought sorcerers to the land next to the excavation site to find out whether gold was buried underneath. That we toil in deserted sites just to uncover the lifestyle of people who lived there centuries ago is something even students fail to grasp, he added.
Handle with care
Later that afternoon, I saw Rajasekar sitting inside a burial trench, under an umbrella. “I am trying to expose a sarcophagus,” Rajasekar told me.
Once a trench is dug and materials or artefacts are located, the next step is to expose them gently as they are too fragile to handle. A burial tool kit comprising micro tools, a small pickaxe, and a brush is put to use.
Using a small knife and pickaxe, Rajasekar started scraping the stone surface, and then, taking a brush, he dusted the sand off it. A small pickaxe is used on soft surfaces and a large pickaxe on harder material, he told me as he switched between the tools.
Every sarcophagus has customary offering pots inside, and legs for support outside. Gnanaraj wanted to know how many legs this one had. “I have exposed four. There seems to be more,” Rajasekar responded, adding that the trench has more offering pots than others.
Later, Gnanaraj took me to a stone circle that had been dug up. It consisted of a ring of standing stones and a sarcophagus and a cist (a smaller, basic coffin). The number of sarcophagi found in each burial differs — from three to one. If a burial has one coffin, it could imply the person was of a high rank or significance and was accorded a solo resting space, Gnanaraj explained. But not all burials were primary ones — some were secondary, he added quickly.
Explaining why this site could belong to the Megalithic age, Gnanaraj said, “All the sarcophagus we found had black and redware offering pots, which is one of the key markers for this period. In some cases, capstones were also found.”
He smiled as we stopped by a pit burial. “Are we heading towards the surprise?” I asked. He nodded and remarked: “This is the most exciting trench of this excavation so far.”
Inside the pit burial, we could see carnelian beads, iron axes, black and redware offering pots. Outside stood a capstone and stone circles. An iron chisel next to the sarcophagus
suggested the use of stone cutting.
Dig workers
Poongavanam and his team were digging trenches at the habitation site, a few hundred metres from the burial ground. They were agricultural labourers before they took up the digging work. Women make Rs 510 and men Rs 517 a day, Amudha said. “Which job is tougher?” I asked.
“We have to stand and work in the sun. Not much difference between the two,” Pushpa responded.
Pushpa rummaged for artefacts from the debris. She found some potsherds. Amudha piled the debris on a large plate and dumped it a few hundred metres away. Heaps of sand were taking shape.
It had taken them seven days to dig just one part of the habitation trench, and another eight days to dig the other part. “All we do from morning to evening is dig,” Shankar said.
Gnanaraj said they keep digging until they find “something”. “We will stop when we find natural soil. Patience is key,” he said.
Dating back
Gnanaraj’s team collected charcoal samples, and plans to conduct residue and fatty acid analyses to determine how old the site was.
However, 99 percent of the unearthed material coming to the Ancient DNA Lab at the Madurai Kamaraj University are contaminated, said its head Prof G Kumaresan.
“The presence of human DNA in most samples will be minimal due to the presence of bacteria. We have to collect samples of whatever is left of the human DNA and analyse. Sometimes, we test twice for accuracy,” he said. Proteins from skeletal remains and organic molecules from potsherds are also analysed.
This lab is currently analysing over 30 samples from excavations in Tamil Nadu in a tie-up with the David Reich Lab of the Harvard Medical School.
Challenges
A few locals came to visit after the sarcophagus was exposed. “Doesn’t it look like a water tank?” one person asked. “Maybe,” another said. “Did people in the past bathe like this?” a third wondered. “It is a sarcophagus, a coffin. This is how people were buried during that time,” Gnanaraj interrupted them to clarify.
Fielding queries is the least of their problems. Protecting the trenches from rains is a bigger task. “Some trenches suffer damage despite covering them with tarpaulin sheets,” he said.
The Kilnamandi site was a stone quarry until a few years ago, so the constant movement of heavy vehicles had also weakened the burials.
The biggest challenge, however, is to identify the habitation site because they get “re-inhabited”. For instance, a habitation site they found in Kilnamandi is not of the same period as the burials. “It could be more recent,” Suresh surmised. “Burial sites, on the other hand, stay preserved as they are away from the village, and
superstitions prevent people from visiting them,” Gnanaraj explained.
Ramakrishna said piecing together evidence in archaeology is nothing short of a gamble and cited an example: “In Keeladi, we dug 120 trenches in two years and that is when we stumbled upon an urban settlement.” Material excavated from habitation sites tell them more about its people than material recovered from burial sites, he emphasised.
Pack up
At 4.30 pm on Day 2, Gnanaraj instructed everyone to start wrapping up. I thought we were done. But not just yet. At 5.15 pm, when the sun was less intense, Suresh and Gnanaraj went from one trench to another, clicking pictures on their phone, and marking each trench. Suresh said the natural lighting is perfect to record their work. After the photo-op, they covered the trenches with tarpaulin. “Ensure that there is no gap,” Suresh told Rajasekar and Juvan. We sipped water in turns and parted ways. The team hopped onto two motorcycles while I got into my car and turned up the air conditioning to its maximum.