Speaking Archaeologically™

On a drive to Dharamshala via Gaggal, you would hardly recognise that your vehicle passed a place, where, once a Buddhist stupa existed. The site in the village of Chaitru was accidentally discovered, when the same road was being laid from Pathankot to Dharamshala in the early 1900s. The cutting of a mound for the construction of the road yielded a head of the Buddha (now in the possession of Lahore Museum, Pakistan) along with the remains of brick and pebble structures, red and micaceous redware pottery sherds and few terracotta and copper objects of Kushana Period(2nd to 3rd century CE). Image 1: The not so noticeable notice boards at the entrance which mention the name of site on a fading rusted board. The site locally known as Bhima ka Tila (or Bhima's Mound), is believed to be formed, when Bhima, one of the five Pandavas , dusted his feet here. The site, until the Archaeological Survey of India took over, hosted the annual village fair, which also featured wrestli...

Have you ever looked at an ancient monument or sculpture Trishla is a research wing member at Speaking Archaeologically since August 2018 and wondered : how it is, that our ancient civilisations, armed with just a set of primitive tools, were able to conceptualise and execute them ? I know I have . But everytime a teacher responded with "That's for you to find out" and multiple google searches led me to the famous "Maybe the God's built it..?" or my mothers favourite, "Alien theory," I put aside my rather genuine inquiry only to forget about it completely-until it hit me again on site at Sanghol. If you haven't read my last blog here, where I took about how we reached the site, its history and present status, it would be a good idea to read that first for what we call "more context". In this blog I'll only be dishing on how we resourcefully tackled our biggest handicap at the Sanghol site which as I had mentioned in that...

Sirat Gohar is a Citizen Archaeology Member at Speaking Archaeologically When we speak of archaeological tourism, no site in Pakistan perhaps surpasses the potential that Taxila has. It attracts tourists from all walks of life, and its rich historical and cultural background makes it famous in the chronicles of history and the travelogues of foreign travellers right from the ancient times. View of Taxila city from Ban Faqiran Stupa Even today, the whole valley is dotted with the signs of the past. Apart from the three Ancient Cities: of Bhir-mound , Sirkap and Sirsukh , Taxila has also been the religious epicentre of the Indian subcontinent, housing ruins of Hindu Temples, Islamic places of worship and Buddhist monasteries. Of these, the Buddhist monasteries can easily be called the oldest, dating back to the second century CE, synchronous with the reign of Kanishka. More than twenty Stupas and Monastic buildings of Kushan period have been excavated so far in Taxil...