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...

Hold it right there! Save your breath. Don't expect me Allahabad juxtaposed with Prayagraj  to call it Prayagraj. The blue of a city I share part of my maternal heritage from never responded to that name. Devprayag if you must absolutely insist but it hasn't been that in several centuries. There's not much of Devprayag left, though, to be fair.  Like I said, it's not a city anymore, it's  a blur-a place where past gasps out of the present like a drowning man gasps for air, beating helplessly at the surface of water.  Allahabad (anglicised version of Illahabad) was originally named after the secular religion Mughal Emperor wished to propagate and was named after the  eponymous Illahabad Fort No matter how much you try to saffronise it, Allahabad  is secular, just like the Mughal Emperor,  w ho decided to call it that but its fate is not too different than that of the unorthodox great-grandson, who was a "pestilent infidel" in the eyes o...

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...

Pen Dinas Hill Fort, Aberystwyth Pen Dinas is the pre-eminent hillfort on the Cardigan Bay coast. The position of Pen Dinas allowed for visual command and political control of the two regional arterial rivers, with sweeping views both inland and also to the North and South of Cardigan Bay. This hour-glass shaped fort is situated on a ridge between the rivers Rheidol and Ystwyth.  Two peaks are enclosed and it is clear that originally they were separate enclosures. At first the northern summit was surrounded by ramparts with a timber revetment and a ditch. Soon afterwards, the southern crest was more substantially fortified with a stone-faced rubble bank and ditch some 3m deep. There were entrances at the north and south with gates supported by posts.  A period of decay or deliberate destruction may have followed before the southern fort was re-modelled. Eventually both forts were joined together with a new revetted wall across the saddle between the peaks, known ...