: Admittedly ‘thrilled’ to be at the site of KCHR’s Pattanam excavations, in the ninth season now, with a range of artefacts alluding to an ancient port’s wide-ranging links across the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to India Sudharshan Seneviratne said he would try to facilitate an academic exchange and a possible collaboration between India and Sri Lanka on Pattanam, as excavations at Sri Lankan sites in the past have thrown up similar artefacts, signalling a strong commercial link between both regions in the ancient era.
“It’s not just bigger sites like Anuradhapura that point to such a link, but smaller sites on the island nation could throw more light on this,” Prof. Seneviratne, himself an archaeologist of international standing, said during an interaction with students and the local people at Pattanam, located about 30 km north of Ernakulam.
Earlier, he said it was important to distinguish between scientific archaeology, done with diligence and application, and parochial, beatified archaeology conducted to attain political ends.
“It’s exciting to see that Pattanam, despite its frugal means, has done commendable work to earn a place in the first category,” said Prof. Seneviratne, who was a student of noted historian Romila Thapar.
An honest, multidisciplinary and unbiased approach is needed to reconstruct a past that tells us about ourselves, he said. “Pattanam is talked with a lot of respect, showcasing their strength in retrieval, interpretation and museum-level presentation skills. It indeed helps us go to the next level.”
To students, he said it is important to contextualise archaeology and cautioned against hasty collaborations that could throw the purpose of such investigations off track. “For instance, who funds your study itself gains significance from a political perspective.”
Archaeological studies, he thought, would be easy to conduct if the local populace were co-opted into the scheme as stakeholders.
Prof. Seneviratne also visited the renovated Paliyam Palace, the Jewish Synagogue at North Paravur and the Cheraman Juma Masjid, near Kodungalloor.
