Wasous

Khirki is crowded, with narrow roads and tall buildings bundled together like Lego bricks stacked precariously. Smack in the middle of this chaos is Khirki Mosque, a 14th century fortress-like structure built during the Tughlaq dynasty.

The style of writing on the coins indicates that they might be from the Lodi dynasty [Credit: V.V. Krishnan/The Hindu]

The mosque is fenced in by high compound walls and the uneven ground is lower than the houses that surround the structure. It is deathly quiet inside, with its myriad archways partially lit by Delhi’s smoggy sunlight. Standing there, it is easy to imagine a priest, or a trader, furtively hurrying along the walls of the mosque to find a spot to bury treasure.

Treasure is what the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) found two months ago in this complex — a hoard of small copper coins vaguely resembling those bite-sized Britannia biscuits from the 90s.

A team from ASI’s conservation wing was levelling the ground in early September as part of ongoing conservation work when one of the workers’ pickaxes landed on a mud pot. Work was halted and ASI archaeologists were called.

The office was abuzz when they learned about the discovery, says N.K. Pathak, superintending archaeologist, ASI-Delhi circle. “As soon as the coins were discovered, there was a big halla. For archaeologists, discoveries like this are always exciting, no matter the value. Everyone said, Khazana mil gaya!” he says, laughing.

Khirki Mosque, Main (South) Entrance Gate [Credit: Varun Shiv Kapur/WikiCommons]

The discovery of these coins is what those in the field call a ‘chance discovery’, as opposed to a planned dig. The mosque is also the site of an earlier discovery of 63 coins in 2003, which was also a chance discovery. There is a possibility that both sets of coins might be from the same era.

Preliminary investigations of the 254 coins reveal that they are from Delhi’s medieval period — 13th to 16th century — the latter part straddling the early modern period. Proper identification can happen only after they are cleaned and studied, says Pathak. “However, some of the coins belong to the reign of Islam Shah Suri.”

Islam Shah Suri is the son of Sher Shah Suri, who founded the Sur dynasty and ruled Delhi for seven years from 1538 to 1545. “Most Islamic coins have inscriptions (what we call legends) on them — the name of the ruler and their father’s name. In this case, some of the coins had ‘Islam Shah Suri, son of Sher Shah Suri’ inscribed on them,” says Shahmoon Ahmad, Assistant Archaeologist, ASI-Lucknow circle, who will be studying the coins further.

Notably, it was Sher Shah who introduced the precursors to the modern rupee and paise — the silver rupaiya and the copper paisa. The gold coins issued by the Sur dynasty were called mohurs. “Discoveries of gold and silver coins are rather rare. Copper coins are not that much of a surprise,” says Pathak.

That’s because copper coins were reused by the general populace; the gold and the silver ones had to be re-minted with the names of current rulers, adds Ahmad.

He suspects that this might be true for this hoard as well. There are several paleographic indications — the style of writing — that indicate that some of the coins might be from the Lodi dynasty, which fell less than two decades before Islam Shah’s reign.

Khirki Mosque, Main (South) Entrance Gate [Credit: V.V. Krishnan/The Hindu]

However, any discovery, even something as small as a copper coin hoard, is quite significant. “The monument is of the Tughlaq period, but the coins are from the Lodi and the Sur periods. Once we date the coins, we can establish that people used money regularly from the earliest date on the coin to the latest,” says Ahmad.

Interestingly, the fact that there are coins from two different dynasties might mean that this was not the hoard of a single person. “It could be the savings of one or two generations of a family,” he adds.

These coins can also establish other things. “They tell us this area was populated, the jurisdiction of the particular ruler, the prosperity of his rule, the money usage patterns, and so on,” says Pathak.

The coins also show that the mosque was in use during the reign of that particular ruler.

If they were indeed minted during the time of Islam Shah, it would mean the mosque was in use even 200 years after it was built.

More than half a millennium later, however, the Khirki Mosque is in bad shape. The buildings that flout ASI’s 100-metre-rule is the least of the concerns. There are broken pillars, loose bricks, decaying stones, a decades-old bat infestation, and more. The boundary wall around the monument came up only in 2003, according to an earlier report in The Hindu.

Khirki Mosque, interior [Credit: V.V. Krishnan/The Hindu]

Conservation work, which began roughly mid-August, started with clearing the debris to bring the lower plinth of the monument to an even level, says deputy superintending archaeologist, Sanjay Kumar Singh. “It was also to make the movement of water on the ground smoother, especially in the monsoon. So work began with levelling the ground,” he says.

When the coins were found, the area around the discovery was carefully cordoned off, while all the debris and mud excavated so far were sieved thoroughly for more surprises from the past. “There is possibility to get anything, even pot shards, at any important site in Delhi. Workers, supervisors, and other staff are trained to be vigilant. We tell them this work is different from what the Public Works Department might do,” says Pathak.

Conservation work will go on for another six months, during which time the broken pillars and the decayed chajja stones will be replaced. “We will also undertake ‘pointing and underpinning’ work to fix the loose bricks and mortar. We will be using the lime mortar mix that was originally used,” adds Pathak.

Detailed information on the coins, however, will roll in before work on the monument is finished. “We will first send them to the science branch for cleaning, after which our numismatics branch will come in to decipher the writing. It will take three to four months,” says Pathak.

What are the possibilities of finding more antiquities here? “That’s just it,” he says. “You can never predict what you can find in Delhi and when. What is beneath the earth, you never know.”

Author: Janane Venkatraman | Source: The Hindu [December 10, 2018]

Archaeologists at the archaeology research institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have unveiled the details of a deluxe carriage unearthed in a cemetery dating back to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770-256 BC) in north China's Hebei Province.

Credit: Xinhua

According to the archaeologists, the carriage is 142.5 cm wide, 106 cm in length and has two wheels with a diameter of 140 centimeters and 38 spokes each. The large volume of the carriage is rare for those that date back to the times before the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), said Li Cunxin, an associate researcher.

The archaeologists also found many exquisite patterns painted on the surface of the carriage and a pair of beast-shaped metal badges embedded into the carriage that have gold foil decorations stuck to them, which still hold their shine even after being underground for such a long period of time.

Credit: Xinhua

Researchers speculated that the occupant of the cemetery was high up in the social pecking order and could be at the level of a tribal leader.


The archaeological team is currently trying to further unveil the details of the carriage via various technologies before fully restoring the finding in the future.

Source: Xinhua [December 10, 2018]

A piece of pottery with an engraving of a smiling female figure was recently unearthed in Ishikawa Prefecture, located in the Chūbu region on Honshu island, that is believed to date back more than 1,100 years.

A female figure is seen engraved on a piece of earthenware in Nonoichi, Ishikawa Prefecture [Credit: Chikako Numata]

The artefact was found in the city's Suematsu district on the site of a ruined Buddhist temple, which experts believe was founded in the second half of the seventh century during the Asuka Period (592-710), the Nonoichi City Board of Education recently announced.

The Suematsu temple ruins are designated as a “historic site” by the central government.

The earthenware is believed to be a fragment of a “gato” (earthen pagoda) pottery work made sometime around the ninth century, education board officials said. It is the first pictorial clay pagoda to have been unearthed in Japan.

Some experts believe the figure represents a celestial nymph who serves the Miroku Bosatsu (Maitreya Bodhisattva), a Buddhist deity. The finding could provide insight into the extent of the spread of Buddhism in ancient times and aspects of the cult of earthen pagodas.

Drawing of the female figure [Credit: Nonoichi City Board of Education]

The artefact, with a plate-like shape measuring 19 centimetres tall, 9.5 cm wide and 1.5 cm thick, is believed to belong to the first tier (ground floor) of an earthen pagoda. A female figure, measuring about 17 cm tall and 7 cm wide, was found engraved with a pointed tool on the front face of the first tier.

The long-haired and smiling figure holds a “hossu,” a ritual implement with bundled hair, in her hand. She wears a long dress called a “mo”, with vertical stripes and shoes with upward-bent tips.

“The smiling figure looks lovely,” said Keiji Matsumura, director-general of the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in the city of Nara. “The artefact is valuable evidence of one specific aspect of the cult of earthen pagodas, which relates to a desire to go to Maitreya’s Pure Land. It also shows that the cult of Maitreya had penetrated the Hokuriku region.”

Author: Chikako Numata | Source: The Asahi Shimbun [December 06, 2018]

Human ancestors first set foot on the interior of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau around 30,000-40,000 years ago, according to new research by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). This new finding moves back the earliest data of habitation in the interior by 20,000 years or more.

Stone artefacts on the surface [Credit: IVPP]

The research team was led by Dr. ZHANG Xiaoling and Prof. GAO Xing from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of CAS. Their study, published in Science, was based on investigations of Nwya Devu, the oldest and highest early Stone Palaeolithic archaeological site known anywhere in the world.

This archaeological achievement is a major breakthrough in our understanding of the human occupation and evolution of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau as well as larger-scale prehistoric human migration and exchanges. It caps 60 years of effort trying to find evidence of the earliest human habitation on the plateau.

The high altitude, atmospheric hypoxia, cold year-round temperatures and low rainfall of the plateau creates an extremely challenging environment for human habitation. Archaeological evidence indicates it was one of the last habitats colonized by Homo sapiens. Today, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is the third least-populous spot on the planet.

Before now, no concrete evidence existed of people inhabiting the interior of the plateau before the Holocene geological epoch (4,200-11,700 years ago). In addition, only a few reliably dated Pleistocene (11,700-2.58 million years ago) archaeological sites had been discovered around the plateau's margins.

Excavations at the site of Nwya Devu in central Tibet, China [Credit: IVPP]

The Nwya Devu Palaeolithic site discovered by this team confirms that human ancestors set foot on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at elevations approaching 5,000 meters above sea level around 30,000-40,000 years ago. It is the first Palaeolithic archaeological site discovered in Tibet that preserves intact stratigraphy allowing age-dating of the site's antiquity. Nwya Devu is located in the Changthang region of northern Tibet, about 300 km northwest of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet Autonomous Region, at about 4,600 meters above sea level.

The site comprises an extensive, dense surface distribution of stone artifacts and a buried continuous record of human occupation. It is the earliest Palaeolithic site known on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and the highest yet discovered anywhere in the world. Before this discovery, the earliest archaeological record of high-altitude human activity was from the Andean Altiplano, at about 4,480 meters above sea level, showing human habitation about 12,000 years ago.

This discovery deepens considerably the history of human occupation of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and the antiquity of human high-altitude (>4,000 masl) adaptations.

The Late Pleistocene (about 12-000-125,000 years ago) was a crucial period for human evolution. During that time, the behavior and cognitive ability of ancient humans developed rapidly and the ability to adapt to a broader range of environments similarly increased. The prehistoric cultural artifacts from Nwya Devu provide important archaeological evidence of the survival strategies of early anatomically and behaviorally modern people to what is arguably the most rigorous terrestrial environment on earth. It also allows analysis of Palaeolithic exchange and interactions between East and West suggesting possible migration routes.