A team of explorers from Government Victoria College here have stumbled upon iron implements belonging to the Iron Age in Kerala from the catchment area of the Malampuzha dam.
K. Rajan, former head of the History Department at the college who led the exploration, said the find had immense potential to throw light on the life of people in the centuries immediately before the beginning of the Christian era. V. Selvakumar, archaeologist from Tamil University, Thanjavur, has corroborated the finding. An expert in Stone Age and Iron Age archaeology, Dr. Selvakumar will examine the site next week.
The findings
The iron implement included a nail, a chisel, a wedge, a knife and a dagger. The broken pieces of the dagger were recovered from a cist burial found at the location.
Mr. Rajan said that when the knife was found beside another cist burial, the nail, chisel, wedge and two other tools were recovered from the top of a broken urn near a stone circle at South Malampuzha.
He said the tools that could not be identified might be a spear-head and the top portion of a sickle.
The iron implements were spotted during a survey of Iron Age sites and burials as part of a University Grants Commission (UGC)-aided project that began in 2014. “The region has many varieties of Iron Age burials, including cairn circles, stone circles, cist burials, dolmens, urn burials, and menhirs,” said Mr. Rajan.
An exploration conducted by M.G. Sasibhooshan in 1980s had found burial sites within the catchment areas of Malampuzha. Archaeological Survey of India director M. Nandiraju has asked the Victoria team to survey the region thoroughly and to document it in detail. The survey is expected to continue for a few more weeks.
Mr. Rajan said that deeper studies were required to find the exact date of the implements recovered from Malampuzha. He said the Iron Age of Europe and India could be traced to different periods. In Kerala, the Iron Age burials dated back to 700 BC, he said.
