Sleepy hamlet wakes up to historical find

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2003 01:43:56 AM ]

MANDVI: The year is 300 C. A boat sails into the port of Nani Rayan with
wine in Roman amphoras. On its way back, it would take home textiles,
ornaments and pottery.

Over 2,300 years later, pieces, probably from those amphoras surfaced as
workers dug the ground to create the Narmada canal through the sleepy
hamlet of Nani Rayan, situated on the banks of the Rukmavati, 4 km from the
river’s confluence with the Arabian Sea.

The digging has unearthed a treasure trove of archaeological
artefacts—pottery, pieces of Roman period amphoras, an iron smelting
foundry and evidence of human settlement dating back to about the 3rd
century B.C., a contemporary of the Sunga-Kushana period.

“Although evidence of human settlements had been found in and around
Nani Rayan in the form of scattered pottery and other artefacts at the
surface level, revealed mostly during tilling of the land, the excavation
for the canal has revealed almost a whole city between three and ten feet
below the ground.

Rest at
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/uncomp/articleshow?artid=90546

Mark Hall
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