THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The latest excavations at Pattanam by the Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) in collaboration with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) have unearthed fragments of Spanish amphorae, the first of its kind to be discovered in India.
Fragments of wine amphoras and broken handles of fish sauce jars, discovered in the 2009 excavations, were confirmed to be of Spanish origin by Roberta Tomber of the British Museum, London.
``The white material in the sherds are actually volcanic material, probably related to Mount Vesuvius. The volcanic clay is good for pottery as they fire evenly,’’ said Roberta, a renowned expert on Roman pottery at a press conference held at the KCHR here on Monday.
``Lots of work had already been done on Roman pottery that identification of these pieces and dating them were not difficult,’’ explained Roberta, who has studied Roman pottery from trade sites on the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Indian Ocean rims.
While Spanish amphora sherds were discovered in the country before, the newly-found sherds from Pattanam is supposed to have originated from a different part of Spain, the southern coast. ``Roman Empire extended over a large area of the Mediterranean and now we have found sherds at Pattanam from various parts of this empire,’’ said KCHR director P J Cherian, who attended the press conference along with Roberta Tomber.
However, this find does not mean that Pattanam had direct trade links with Spain. ``Our hunch is that merchants in Alexandria compiled pottery and cargo and then through the Red Sea exported it to India. Even if Indian merchants did not have a direct link to Spanish traders, this find would be of international importance,’’ said Roberta.
The materials found include broken pieces of a new type of wine amphora that come from the province of Catalan in Spain, which has a distinctive collared rim, grooved handle and solid base. Another type found at Pattanam is a jar for fish sauce, which has distinctive, long flat handles, a hollow base and an out-turned rim. It is supposed to have been made along the southern coast of Spain, particularly in the region of Cadiz.
``However the wine amphoras far outnumber the fish-sauce amphoras, which was used to store a fish sauce called Garum in the South-East parts of Asia,’’ said Roberta.
Both the fragments belong to the period when Pattanam was commercially very active - First century BC to First century AD.
In the meanwhile, carbon dating studies at the Georgia University in the US has calculated the calibrated age distribution of the canoe and bollards from the Pattanam site as falling between 36 BC and 24 AD.
