Place · early historic port town · India
Chandraketugarh
The excavated town at Chandraketugarh in Barasat district, West Bengal, 35 kilometres north of Kolkata — the eastern delta hub of Sunga, Kushana and Gupta-period trade. The site has yielded extraordinary terracottas and seals (3rd c. BCE - 10th c. CE), with over 100,000 pieces now in global collections. The town's identification with the Gangaridai of Ptolemy and the Classical sources, the kingdom whose elephant corps turned Alexander back at the Beas, remains argued over but reasonably supported. The Rajbari mound and the Khana-Mihir temple are the surface features; most of the city remains unexcavated under villages. The 1st-century CE delta terracotta figurines are the finest surviving of their period in the subcontinent.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 22.690, 88.680
Connections (1)
- Early historic deltaWari-Bateshwar
Chandraketugarh near the Bengal coast and Wari-Bateshwar in the delta interior are among the earliest urban and trading sites of the lower Ganga, and Chandraketugarh's terracottas — crowded, detailed, showing ships, ornaments and hairstyles in extraordinary specificity — are the finest of their kind in India. The site is still mostly unexcavated and has been comprehensively looted, so most of what is known comes from objects without a findspot.
Sources
Chandraketugarh site reports
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