Speaking Archaeologically™

The Manauli Fort, Mohali The morning of August , the day of the season’s first site visit carried with it a wave of familiarity. In the car, on the way to the site, as we were seated alongside a bunch of eager new recruits, memories from Batch 2018’s first site visit last year dropped by to say hello. The Manauli fort, located in a tiny hamlet in Punjab, approximately 15.5 Km from Chandigarh, was once a symbol of bolstering defence and Sikh pride. Several local testaments reveal that the fort was built sometime in the 17th Century, by a certain Mughal ruler. A century later, as the Sikh-Muslim enmity took shape in the form of several battles and Misls came to power in the state of Punjab, Nawab Kapoor Singh of the Singhpuria Misl clinched the fort from the Mughal ruler and encouraged his fellow Sikhs to settle in the area. Today, akin to an old man with several afflictions, it’s a desolate piece of history crumbling away amid state apathy The present state...

                                             “ I struck a deal here…                    To walk back in time                 And breathe its air...” Diptarak Datta is a Research  Wing  Member at Speaking Archaeologically As the auto left us on the left side of the road, on a fresh, winter Sunday morning,  my friend and I were baffled and taken aback for a while, wondering, which way, the much read about Purana Qila, stood. The huge poster, directing the travelers towards the zoological park, was all the more distracting. Unknowingly, we crossed the ro...

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...

If you're looking for a perfect holiday destination or somewhere you would drive to hangout and grab some beers with your friends,Sanghol might not qualify to feature in your list. But if your archaeology seeds are yearning to sprout, Sanghol is water to you. Archaeology does something to you. It makes you excited about an ordinary place, excited enough to write a blog about it. Sanghol, a small village in the Fatehgarh Sahib, district, around 40 kilometres from Chandigarh on the Chandigarh-Ludhiana highway is an archaeological haven. The village, in a series of excavations in 1968 and 1985 had yielded many sculptures, stone slabs and pillars dating back to the Kushans ( now housed at the Sanghol site museum), and also played host for the First Planning Workshop and Site Visit of Speaking Archaeologically’s New Batch. On the dawn of August 19, 2018 we set out, on what we as Batch 2018, assumed would be one great adventure trip. Something à la Indiana Jones, an idea tha...

“Defaced ruins of architecture and statuary, like the wrinkles of decrepitude of a once beautiful woman, only make one regret that one did not see them when they were enchanting.”                                                                                            - Horace Walpole Rattan Kaur Rainu is a Research Wing member at Speaking Archaeologically since August 2018 This blog doesn’t begin on an adventurous note. Neither does it involve a spontaneous road trip. Rather it is the product of an intrigue that drove me to explore a place  I had never even heard of until a few days ago. Goethe said architecture is music. Well, architecture and music are the two things that have always been my favourite. Be it an an ol...

THE BHULI BHATYARI KA MAHAL An oddly disproportional and red Hanuman stands sternly, ripping his chest open as Delhi wizzes by his feet. Many seem almost oblivious to this grand and grotesque gesture. There is a meeting to get to, a date, an assignment to submit a week after it was due, or in most cases just an air conditioner to find and set up base   in front of. Behind the statue, a thin, unassuming road slithers past all the chaos, ending at a place strikingly different from where it began. It ends in the 14 th century, at a now decrepit Tughlaq era hunting lodge. The bhuli bhatyari ka mahal is conveniently tucked away behind the hanuman statue in busy Karol Bagh. It is a spot like so many others in the capital, where the ancient and the modern live cheek and jowl, and hopefully will continue to do so for a long time to come. It faces a large DMNC water tank, where on most occasions, the water turns a rancid green. Every few minutes, the silence around gets in...