KEEZHADI
- ART & CULTURE
News:
Keezhadi excavations show
people thrived producing textiles and making jewellery
What's
in the news?
●
From among the excavations of the Keezhadi
archaeological site, situated 13 km from Madurai, ivory chess pieces, ivory
dice and terracotta hopscotch stones were found.
Key
takeaways:
●
The excavations had shown brick structures, ring wells, drainage
systems and furnaces belonging to the Sangam age.
●
The people of those times thrived producing textiles, making jewellery using
terracotta and semi-precious stones, made terracotta pottery, drilled ivory,
made iron implements and used bricks made in kilns for many centuries.
Go
back to basics:
Keezhadi
Civilisation:
●
It
is also referred to as the Vaigai
civilization, named after a nearby river Vaigai.
● Came
from IVC - Discoveries at Keezhadi suggest that the people who
lived there may have travelled south from the Harappan or Indus Valley
civilization (as it declined) to start new lives.
●
The civilization was an indigenous, well
developed self-sustaining urban culture with an industry and Tamil-Brahmi script, indicating that
the people of that era were highly literate.
●
Evidence of ancient industrial production are spinning and weaving tools, cloth dyeing
operations, brick kilns, and ceramic workshops.
●
Keezhadi has added greatly to the
credibility of Sangam Literature.
Second
urbanization:
●
Discoveries date to around 500 B.C., when an agricultural surplus
allowed people to build urban centers in what’s known as the subcontinent’s
“second urbanization.”
●
The name reflects a contrast with the much
earlier “first urbanization” of the Indus Valley civilization that began 2500
BCE.
●
Previously,
it was believed that the second urbanization happened along the Central Ganges
Plain in northern India.
●
But new evidence suggests a similar
phenomenon occurred in the south as well.
Religion:
●
An interesting feature of Keezhadi is that
it has not revealed any signs of
religious worship in all the five rounds.
Economy:
●
The fertile nature of the area and cattle
rearing played a crucial role in its evolution paving the way for excess
production of rice and sea trading of the inhabitants.