After a decade of disruption, Pattanam needs a renewed vision
Beneath a seemingly ordinary village in the Periyar Delta of southwestern India lies an archaeological record connecting the eastern and western worlds of the Indian Ocean—from the Atlantic shores of Western Europe to the South China Sea emptying into the Pacific.
That village is Pattanam, near North Paravur in Ernakulam district, Keralam.
Houses, shops, tar roads, roads, a government primary school, several hospitals, coconut groves and bodies of water now occupy much of this coastal landscape. But beneath this lies evidence that has changed our understanding of the early history of Kerala and the maritime world in the Indian Ocean and beyond.
Archaeological evidence broadly dates to between 300 BC and 300 AD, with particularly substantial evidence from 100 BC to 300 AD Structures, pottery, beads, metals, coins, biological and geological remains, industrial and workshop contexts, and a wooden canoe harbor complex dated to between 100 BC and 100 AD have been scientifically documented.
Materials have been found from South Asia, West Asia, the Red Sea, Africa and the Mediterranean, along with evidence of the movement of people, goods, technology and ideas over considerable distances.
Evidence suggests that Pattanam was part of the maritime world conventionally associated with Muziris or Muciri Pattinam. Whether the entire ancient port can be identified with today’s Pattanam remains an open archaeological question.
This is one of the reasons why the excavation and scientific research of Pattanam must be resumed.
What did the research reveal?
Excavations and surveys begun in 2006-07 gradually transformed what initially appeared to be an ordinary archaeological mound into an international multidisciplinary research laboratory.
Between 2006 and 2023, 67 trenches were excavated, yielding approximately 1.3 million registered artifacts and nearly 45 million pottery sherds. Yet less than 1% of the archaeological mound, which covers more than 100 acres, has been excavated.
The discoveries were important not only because of their quantity. Structures, urban features such as latrines and water wells, industrial remains, artefacts and environmental evidence together point to a highly interconnected settlement.
Pattanam did not emerge as an isolated site in Keralam, or simply as a center of Keralam-Roman trade, but as a node in a much wider network spanning the ancient world.
The Periyar and the river systems between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea were central to this story. Recent studies have identified nearly 51,800 islands of rainforest along with the human geographic landscape represented by the Kurinji, Mullai, Marutham, Paalai and Neithal thinai traditions.
Pattanam occupied the ancient estuarine landscape associated with the Western Ghats, its forests and resources. Through the Periyar, the Palakkad Gap and the Vaigai basin, the west coast was connected to the east coast and beyond it to the Bay of Bengal, the Andaman Sea and the South China Sea.
Archaeological parallels link Pattanam to sites ranging from Corbridge in England in the west to Hepa in southern China in the east, and from Tissamaharama in Sri Lanka in the south to Kopia, near the Indo-Nepal border, in the north, near the Lumbini-Kapilavastu region.
The first decade of research brought together an extraordinary range of institutions and experts. Universities and research institutions including Oxford, Georgia, Rome, Durham, UCL, the Palace Museum in Beijing and the British Museum in London, along with several others in Europe, North America, Asia and India, participated in various aspects of the work.
Researchers, scientists, students and the local community collaborated with specialists in archaeology, art, architecture, history, anthropology, geology, genetics, physics, petrography, environmental studies, linguistics, epigraphy, literature, conservation, museum studies, photography and other fields. Pattanam thus became a place where scholars from different parts of the world could gather to explore the common human past.
International research fellowships were conceived. In 2015, an interdisciplinary residential diploma program was launched in Pattanam. Plans have been drawn up for multi-purpose science laboratories, advanced libraries, archaeological and heritage displays, a Children’s Museum, home museums and other forms of public engagement.
There have also been attempts to connect archeology with contemporary village life.
The idea was that the inheritance should not become something imposed on Pattanam from outside. The local community, its landscape, ecology and daily life had to remain part of the story. This included green archeology initiatives, entrepreneurial activities, responsible tourism, environmental awareness, local participation and heritage-sensitive development.
The aim was to create Pattanam as a model place where archaeology, science, education, environment, professional opportunities and the people of Pattanam could exist in a living relationship.
A ten-year hiatus
After ten years of excavation and research, the program was discontinued in 2016.
Several initiatives have been halted, discontinued or left unimplemented. The International Diploma in Residence did not continue. The children’s museum and scholarship program were discontinued. Plans for an $8 million multi-purpose archeology laboratory linked to the Palace Museum in Beijing did not materialize. A proposed in-situ museum around the ancient port complex including a six-metre wooden canoe and the Muziris Museum also remained unfinished.
A program to purchase archaeologically significant land from local landowners resulted in the purchase of more than eight acres, but did not proceed.
Other plans – for an archaeological park, a modern library, an academic campus, interpretation centers and community-oriented facilities – also remained incomplete or were not pursued further.
The result was an unfortunate gap in Pattanam’s ongoing research development between 2016 and 2026.
The important question now is how research and allied activities can be resumed.
The establishment of the PAMA Institute for Advancement of Transdisciplinary Archaeological Sciences in 2018 was an attempt to keep intellectual and scientific inquiry alive.
PAMA (Paternal and Maternal Ancestry) grew out of a broader intellectual vision shaped by scholars such as Romila Thapar, KN Panikkar and RVG Menon, as well as an international network of scholars involved in Pattanam research.
PAMA’s purpose was to maintain a space in which archeology could converse with history, anthropology, genetics, geology, environmental studies, conservation, and other disciplines, and where evidence could continue to be challenged and explored through field research and internships.
PAMA subsequently obtained excavation permits from the Archaeological Survey of India for the years 2019-20 and 2021-22.
Six more trenches – 62 to 67 – were dug in Pattanam between 2020 and 2023 with own resources. It also conducted nearly a dozen trial trenches in Mathilakam in 2019 and conducted a survey in Idukki district in 2022.
Excavations at Pattanam have also yielded notable discoveries, including a head sculpture identified as the Roman emperor Domitian and a ringstone resembling a Greek sphinx, which experts have identified as closely related to early Roman imperial ringstone traditions.
PAMA helped keep this wider research network alive until 2023.
Pattanam redesign
Pattanam lies in an archaeological landscape that brings together evidence of people speaking, trading and living in nearly forty linguistic and cultural worlds between about 300 BC and 300 AD Why should the response to such a site be limited to another excavation office or a conventional museum?
Could Pattanam eventually become the Viswa Bharathi of the 21st century, a vibrant hub where archaeology, history, anthropology, genetics, geology, environmental science, conservation, technology, literature, languages and art intersect?
The aim is not to transplant a conventional university onto an archaeological site, but to build a global research and learning community that grows organically out of the landscape and works in partnership with its people.
Such an institution could bring researchers and students from India and abroad into sustained engagement with the archaeological record of Pattanam and its environment. The ancient port, canoes, workshops, ceramics, metals and biological remains would serve not only as exhibits but as starting points for exploring human mobility, technology, ecology, trade, language and social life. The villages and changing landscape of Periyar would be integral to this process, offering opportunities to study how communities and environments evolved.
Viswabharathi of the 21st century
The Pattanam Autonomous Heritage Authority could provide a suitable institutional framework. His far-reaching ambition could be much bigger: a 21st-century Viswa Bharathi in Pattanam/Muziris – a global center for multidisciplinary research and learning rooted in rural Keralam and the extraordinary human connections beneath.
The archaeological record of Pattanam belongs to the people who lived there 2,000 years ago, to those who live there today, and to generations yet to come.
(PJ Cherian is Director of Pattanam Excavations and Explorations, 2006-2023; pamatatas@gmail.com)