Place · urn-burial site · India
Adichanallur
Also known as Adichanallur urn burials, Adichanallur, Tirunelveli, Tirunelveli
The Iron Age urn burial site in Thoothukudi district, Tamil Nadu — a vast cemetery in the Tamraparni river valley with over 150 excavated urn burials, continuously dated c.900 BCE to 200 BCE across the pre-Sangam and early Sangam periods. The urns held iron, bronze and inscribed pottery; the gold and iron grave-goods are now in the British Museum (recovered by Fred Fawcett 1876 and A. Rea 1904) and the Government Museum, Chennai. The site's Tamil-Brahmi inscribed sherds are the earliest documented writing in Tamil country. 2004 and 2018 ASI excavations recovered further burials and are the basis of the Keeladi dating comparisons.
- Function
- Burial and funerary
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 8.630, 77.880
Connections (2)
- Contemporary capital withBrahmagiri
Brahmagiri gave the chronology and Adichanallur gave the material: the stratified neolithic to early historic sequence in one Karnataka hillside, and a Tamil urn cemetery whose gold, iron and inscribed pottery fill a museum. Both are being redated — Adichanallur very contentiously, since earlier dates for its inscribed sherds would make Tamil-Brahmi older than the Ashokan Brahmi it is usually derived from, which is a politically loaded conclusion.
- In the same set asKeeladi
Keeladi on the Vaigai and Adichanallur on the Tamraparni are the two Tamil excavations that carry the argument about how early literacy and urbanism begin in the south. Both have produced graffiti-marked or inscribed sherds; one is an urn cemetery dug in the nineteenth century and again in 2004, the other a settlement dug since 2015 whose dates are still contested.
On these journeys
Sources
Adichanallur excavation reports, ASI
Open Adichanallur in the repository →