Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Poompuhar-Under water Exploration & Excavation


Tamil Nadu is famous for a number of Ports on the Eastern seacoast. The Ports of Sopatanam, Kaverippumpattinam, Tranquebar, Karaikkal, Periyappattinam and Kanyakumari are mentioned in the chronicles of foreign travelers and in Sangam literature. Kavirippumpattinam is said to submerge under sea. Archaeology Department in collaboration with the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa in the year 1981 conducted a preliminary exploration. It has spotted some heaps in about 30-meter depth off the shore of Poompuhar. Airlift operations in 7m depths revealed three courses of stone masonry off Vanagiri. The stone blocks vary in size 30x20x5 cm, 65x40x10 cm and 60x35x10 cm. The approximate date of the structures can be ascertained to 2nd century BCE - 4th century CE. 
Shipwreck discovered in 1991 at a water depth of 19 m and the wooden planks of the hull were traced. The ship is about 50 m in length and 15 m in width. A heavily encrusted cannon measuring 2.1 in length was located close to the wreck. The most important findings were lead ingots recovered from the wreck. The average weight of the ingots is 68.5 kg. They are 87-90 cm length , 15 –18 cm breadth and 6 cm thick. Underwater Archaeological Site Museum was established at Poompuhar. 

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1 comment:

helios said...

Greetings!

I am mailing from Manipal University in Karnataka. I am a teaching faculty at the Department of Atomic and Molecular Physics of Manipal University. I am in the process authoring a book on how spectroscopy can be applied for archaeological analysis. The book also has chapter on Indian archaeology and I referring to the excavations done at Poompuhar in Tamil Nadu.

In this context I happened to come across the following blog article of yours.

http://archaeologyexcavations.blogspot.in/2012/02/poompuhar-under-water-exploration.html

I would like to use (with credits) the first image that you have provided in the article. I hereby seek permission from you for the same and shall be much obliged if you would allow me to use it. If permission regarding the same needs to be obtained from other sources, kindly direct me to the same.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.
Sincere Regards
Surya Harikrishnan