Keezhadi Museum

 Around 2015, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) made an exciting new archaeological discovery south-east of Madurai in the Keezhadi village. What looked like urban settlements with houses built of standardized bricks and tiled roofs were found at a depth of about 2.5m. More significantly, they were dated between the 6th and 3rd century BCE! Pottery, beads, iron tools and weapons, teracotta tools and toys have been found. To put this in context, the only other urban settlement in India that is older than this is the Indus Valley (or Harappan) Civilization which dates back to the 3rd millennium BCE. 

Some of the pottery found in the site had inscriptions that seem to be Tamil Brahmi providing tantalizing circumstantial evidence that links this settlement with the Sangam poetry corpus. That is, if you are willing to take a leap of faith. Until now, the Tamil Sangam poetry itself has been dated to a much later period: 1st and 2nd century CE. In my humble opinion, the fact that there is Tamil Brahmi writing suggests the Keezhadi people were potentially Tamil speakers, but does not by itself mean their language was evolved enough to produce the poetry of the richness and sophistication of Sangam Tamil. On the other hand, I have always felt the current dating of Sangam poetry also highly suspect.  Compressing that vast corpus to 200 years seems like a rather tight fit. In any case, I am hoping findings like Keezhadi make historians revisit the dating of Sangam poetry.

There is also some controversy around the age of the pottery with inscriptions (as to which end of the 6th century BCE - 2nd century BCE time frame they belong to). The controversy is that, if they turn out to be older than the 3rd century BCE, then that pre-dates Ashokan Brahmi, the script that was used in Ashokan edicts found throughout India. However Tamil Brahmi has until now been considered an evolution of (Ashokan or Mauryan) Brahmi and not the other way around.

We cannot access the archeological sites themselves, where excavations are still going on. However an excellent museum has been put together that houses many of the artifacts and some model recreations from the Keezhadi site. We visited this museum recently and this post is inspired by that visit. 

As you enter the museum there is a small auditorium where they show a 15 minute video providing the historical context and background which is best seen before seeing the museum itself. 

Let me just give a brief background on stages of growth of a particular human culture or civilization before we see where Keezhadi fits in; human populations go though various stages in their development as a culture starting from hunter gatherers and three peiods of Stone Age, namely Paleolithic (Old), Mesolithic (Middle) and Neolithic (New) Stone Ages. In the Paleolithic period, large stone tools with  sharpened edges are usually found. In latter ages, smaller, more specialized tools and more polished stone tools are used. Some of these human cultures discover iron and/or copper and gold go through the Iron Age developing metallic tools, coins and weapons. 

As they go through these stages, humans move from a nomadic hunter gatherer life style to settled societies, with farming and agrictulture, producing food that can be saved across seasons. They start producing pots for storage. As the society becomes more sophisticated, it produces goods for leisure such as jewels and ornaments using beads and metals and toys and games. Coins from other remote civilizations can be found suggesting trade links to those societies. If they develop writing, they start making inscriptions or other signages on rocks, caves and pots. 

The Keezhadi settlement is clearly an Iron Age settlement which shows all the stages of development listed above:

• Walls made of standard sized bricks, tiles, ringed wells
• Terracotta pipes and brick-made channels for water
• Black and red pottery including Black Polished ware 
• Seals, Roman coins and arretine pottery shards suggest trades to remote civilizations
• Tamil Brahmi script in pot shards
• Many iron tools such as ladles, sickles and knives
• Beads of different kinds and small gold ornaments
• Toys like cube and cuboid dice made of ivory and terracotta

The museum includes references to Sangam Literature (especially Natrinai, Purananuru and Agananuru) that indirectly refer to some of the artifacts. The juxtaposition of Sangam poetry references next to artifacts might suggest a direct link but I found these connections quite tenuous.  For instance, next to an antimony rod that was evidently used for decorating a woman's eyelash, there is a citation of a line from a Natrinai poem that talks about a women's hazel eys with decorated eyelashes. 

On less controversial matters, I found the museum very well organized. Local design elements such as Athankudi tiles and wood work that is reminiscent of Chettinadu have been used tastefully in the multiple buildings that make up the museum. The sheer number and variety of artifacts on display for a settlement that was discovered only 10 years ago is quite remarkable. We went on a week day and the crowds were sparse; I hope the museum gets added to everyone's must-see list for Madurai. 

R. Balaji