PATTANAM (India): Pottery shards, beads, Roman copper coins and ancient wine bottles litter the strata beneath this small seaside village in India’s southern Kerala state. The 250 families, mostly agricultural labourers, who live in Pattanam, 260 kilometres north of Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram, find the objects pretty, but would rather dig up the ground and build larger homes.
But according to archaeologists K.P. Shajan and V. Selvakumar, they may be destroying the remnants of Muziris, a well-documented trading port where Rome and India met almost 3,000 years ago.
They say that, based on remote sensing data, a river close to Pattanam had changed its course and the ancient port may have been buried due to earthquakes or floods.
The two are worried construction activity in the village will destroy evidence about the existence of the port before they get the chance to examine it scientifically.
“There is no doubt that Pattanam was a major port that is linked to Indo-Roman trade,” Shajan tells AFP. “But we can’t confirm whether it was Muziris. We need more collaborative evidence to support our findings.”
A majority of the families that live in Pattanam are demolishing old tiled-roof structures and replacing them with concrete buildings right in the middle of the 1.5 kilometre zone where Shajan and Selvakumar say Muziris was possibly located.
Muziris was a port city mentioned in several ancient travelogues and scholarly texts as a major centre of trade between India and Rome, especially in pepper and other spices around the second century BC to probably as late as the 6th century AD.
Christianity may have been introduced to the sub-continent through Muziris, historians say. But Muziris mysteriously dropped off the map — maybe to war, plague, or disaster.
The two archaeologists say they want to find out for sure and have asked local preservation groups to help.
Kerala’s Historical Research Council, an independent body that promotes research in history, says it has written to the Archaeological Survey of India, which is in charge of protecting monuments and historical places, to take steps to protect Pattanam.
But K.V. Kunjikrishnan, a professor of history, says neither the government nor the Archaeological Survey of India has responded.
“The construction activity in the area may destroy vital evidence of historical importance,” says Kunjikrishnan.
Pattanam housewife Sheeba Murali says ancient beads pop out from the ground after heavy rains and the 30-year-old history graduate, like some other villagers, collects them and hands them over to the archaeologists.
Villagers say they used to get gold coins from the site, but kept the finds quiet.
“Nobody admits whatever things they get. We are scared that the government may take over our land for archaeological survey,” says villager Arun Rajagopal.—AFP
