<< News >> University of Kerala Department confirms palaeolithic find
Submitted by coldrum on Wednesday, 14 February 2007 Page Views: 6467
Mesolithic, Palaeolithic and EarlierCountry: India The Department of Archaeology, University of Kerala, has confirmed that the palaeolithic site it found in December 2006 at Chandakkunnu, near Nilambur, belonged to the middle palaeolithic period.This confirmation was made after Ajit Kumar, department head, made a second visit to the site in the last week of January. According to Dr. Ajit, the second visit yielded more artefacts, particularly tools in various stages of manufacture, which confirmed the department team's earlier assertion that what it discovered near Nilambur was a `primary factory site' of the middle palaeolithic period.
"We had in fact collected artefacts from the southern end of a vein of quartz formation that is now noticed to run further north into the forested tracts for nearly 100 to 200 meters. At some places this vein of quartz projects out of the soil, at some places partly and at some places lay buried. All along the fringes of this formation lay scattered artefacts in various state of manufacture, clearly reiterating our earlier view that it is a primary factory site. The late Acheulian character of some of the tools earlier found were also confirmed when more late-Acheulian flake-based hand axe element was discovered at the site. Apart from these, a few specimens of hand axe and cleaver elements identified with early Acheulian period were also found. However, the large number of flake-based scrapers and borers among the finds once again reiterate the palaeolithic site to be a late Acheulian-middle palaeolithic in affiliation," he told The Hindu .
In December 2006, a 10-member team of students from the Department had found the artefacts in the site that lies next to the Kerala Forest Research Institute and the Teak Museum campus.
The team found 34 tools of the middle palaeolithic age from around a quartz formation south of the river Karimpuzha a tributary of the river Chaliyar. The tools lay scattered in an area of about 50 sq metres and were thought to be as old as 1.5 lakh years Before Present (BP) or as recent as 23,000 year BP.
The team also discovered a palaeo-channel and megalithic stone formations near the site.
According to Dr. Ajit, the first discovery of such a site in the State was at Kanjirappuzha in Palakkad district in 1974.
The artefacts found at Chandakkunnu were made of coarse quartz and fall mainly in the typological classification of `scrappers'. They were made on flakes using middle palaeolithic techniques that archaeologists call the `Levallosian' technique or the `Tortoise Core' technique. The quantity and variety of the artefacts found at Chandakkunnu was much greater than those found in 1974 at Kanjirappuzha, Dr. Ajit added.
G. Mahadevan
thehindu.