The bowl, discovered by a Tamil Nadu department of archaeology team, carries five graffiti signs arranged from left to right, making it the longest sequence of such marks recorded in the state.
Archaeologists have so far unearthed around 16,000 graffiti-inscribed potsherds across Tamil Nadu. Graffiti marks found at sites including Kodumanal, Keeladi, Thulukkarpatti and Kilnamandi in Tamil Nadu and in Indus Valley sites have 90% similarities, according to a recent morphological study. Indus Valley Civilization existed between 3,300 BCE and 1,300 BCE. Among the other artefacts that caught the excavators’ imagination is a 1.9m iron spear.
We have to decipher the meaning,” said K Rajan, adviser to the TN department and a co-author of a morphological study of Indus signs and graffiti marks found in Tamil Nadu . Researchers said Tamil-Brahmi stone inscriptions and inscribed potsherds bear symbols at the ends of letters, suggesting these could represent an earlier form of communication. “We also found arrowheads, axes, swords, daggers, knives and iron nails,” said S Paranthaman, excavation director at the site. This indicates that the site evolved from the Early Iron Age to the Late Iron Age,” Paranthaman said.
The bowl, discovered by a Tamil Nadu department of archaeology team, carries five graffiti signs arranged from left to right, making it the longest sequence of such marks recorded in the state. Excavators believe this may be an early form of writing as another bowl bears the same five symbols in a different order. “In the 1960s, ASI had found three graffiti signs in different orders at Sanur near Chengalpet. Now we’ve found five symbols in two different orders. “One other object found is suspected to be an ancient steel sword. “We found four types of burials — pit, cist, urn and sarcophagus — at a single site, reflecting the composite nature of the community.