The Hindu : Excavation impossible within a month, say experts

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Friday, Mar 07, 2003

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Excavation impossible within a month, say experts

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI MARCH 6. Will the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) have the answers that the Allahabad High Court wants in one month? It would be hard put to do so, say archaeologists. An excavation of a site as large as the one in Ayodhya would take approximately 12 months.

M.K. Dhavalikar, former director of the Deccan College of Archaeology, said ``an ideal time frame would be three full seasons of three to four months per year''. One month, he said, was no time at all. He suggested that the Allahabad High Court was ``possibly not aware'' that an archaeological excavation had to go ``layer by layer and that a good excavation was not possible in one month''.

An excavation had to be planned, surface exploration done and then a decision taken on where to begin digging. A small trench would not lead anywhere.

Suraj Bhan, Professor of Archaeology at Kurukshetra University, said it was possible that the time allotted by the court was based on claims made about the structures found near the surface at the time of the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

He said that a site like the one in Ayodhya had been inhabited continuously for almost 2000 years and would, therefore, have seen a lot of `disturbance' i.e. movement of things of one period (layer) into another, once place to another. These disturbances would have to be properly detected and explained.

Geo-archaeologist, S.N. Rajguru, agreed with this view and said that excavating a site like the one in Ayodhya would not be simple, and one month was certainly not sufficient.

He also said that since the whole purpose was to find a temple structure, mere pillars and other movable objects would not prove anything. A structure would have to be found in situ and associated objects found and identified to establish what the site was used for.

Prof. Bhan said any archaeological exploration should be conducted as per the accepted methodologies of the discipline. Of particular importance was recording data correctly, for example at exactly what point objects are found on the site.

This, he said, was essential to any correct interpretation of the findings.

Dr. Dhavalikar also said that archaeological excavations threw up different things at different layers and all the findings had to be properly recorded.

An archaeologist cannot simply ignore what lies on top while looking for something below.

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