Tamil Nadu CM Stalin inaugurates Keeladi onsite museum displaying ancient structural remains

Chennai: An expanse of brick walls, ring wells, terracotta pipes, and covered drainage – some of the structural remains and cultural layers of Keeladi buried deep under the earth for over 2,000 years – will greet visitors to the brand-new on-site museum at the Sangam Era site near Madurai. The museum, spread over an area of about 4.50 acres and built at a cost of Rs 24 crore, located at the Keeladi archaeological site was inaugurated by Chief Minister M K Stalin via video conferencing on Friday.

Interior of Keeladi museum. 

The open-air museum will be the largest in Tamil Nadu as the DMK dispensation takes pride in the archaeological findings that support the party’s often-repeated assertion that India’s history should be rewritten from the Tamil landscape.

Keeladi, discovered in 2014 by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), is an important excavation site in Tamil Nadu. Findings there helped establish that the village is a Sangam Era site potentially 2,600 years old. In the last decade, about 20,000 artefacts have been unearthed from Keeladi alone with excavations across the state yielding several pathbreaking findings.

Bird's eye view of Keeladi museum. 

A brick structure, 90/35 metres long, excavated from Keeladi, will be the cynosure of all eyes at the open-air museum, displaying the advanced construction technique of Keeladi's inhabitants. These brick walls and floors have silica content indicating durable, high-quality manufacturing.

Visitors will also witness the well-organised and planned drainage systems, terracotta ring wells (some with decorations), and roofing materials, demonstrating the ancient inhabitants' water management skills.

“The structural remains and cultural layers of Keeladi unearthed from here will be on display at the museum. We have about 48 trenches on display. We want people to experience them in an excavation site setting. We have taken care to display remains from the second, fifth and sixth phases of excavation,” an Archaeological Officer told DH.

Potteries, pot sherds, and other utensils made of terracotta are also being displayed at the museum. The museum, a steel structure with Mangaluru tiles and glass over the roof, has two display halls 80 metres apart from each other.

Artefacts found from Keeladi are already being displayed at a state-of-the-art museum in the village, which was inaugurated in 2023.

Keeladi is one of the most politicised archaeological site in the recent past. ASI archaeologist K Amarnath Ramakrishna was abruptly transferred to Assam in 2017, and his successor claimed there were no “significant findings” in the third phase which led to a massive uproar with Tamil parties accusing the BJP of being behind the move.

From the fourth phase, the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology (TNSDA) took over the excavations in Keeladi -- about 20,000 artefacts have been recovered from Keeladi since 2014.

In recent years, Keeladi has become a symbol of Tamil pride, prompting renewed public interest in archaeology, coupled with the DMK government’s emphasis on the ancient glory of Tamils.