Is Gujarat sitting on a treasure trove of history? When residents of Hathijan on the outskirts of Ahmedabad stumbled upon a 'vav' (step-well) while digging for a wall recently, they touched history, literally.
Digging, either for ordinary construction or for canals, has thrown up several artefacts from the past — from the fossilised eggs of dinosaurs that walked the earth 65 million years ago to a city that bustled with life 2,000 years back.
"It came as a surprise," says Baldev Solanki, who was digging with others to build the wall, and found what archaeologists identify as a 'vav' belonging to the Maratha period.
"Gujarat is indeed perched on a rich past. According to estimates, one- fourth of the state's nearly 18,000 villages and many of its cities are on mounds that conceal much of our history," says director of the state archaeology department, YS Rawat.
Construction workers in Balasinore, who found a "hard, round object" while digging early this year,were also pleasantly surprised. The "object" later turned out to be a fossilised dinosaur egg, found at a distance from Raiyoli, the original dinosaur site.
"The discovery of the first dinosaur egg in Gujarat also happened by chance. It was in the '70s that a Geological Survey of India team found tribals in Dahod district worshipping a round stone. They had the stone tested and found it to be a fossilised egg, a find that led to a major dinosaur hunt in the state," says Rawat.
And, when workers dug a canal to help the Narmada waters reach Kutch, little did they know that they were working on a 2,000-year-old city which had trade links with the Roman world. "The excavation for the canal has revealed a whole city between three and 10 feet below the ground in Nani Rayan village. It has revealed walls of houses, brick kilns and a foundry for iron smelting,'' says Pulin Vasa, adviser to the state department of archaeology.
In Vadodara,what was routine construction work — part of the Baroda Model District project a couple of years ago — left district collectorate officials in a tizzy. Digging in the collectorate campus led to carved slabs that included part of the 'shikhar' of a temple, a semi-circular stone structure which formed the 'amalaka' and a square structure which was the base of a pillar.
"The findings seem to belong to the 12th century," says MS University archaeology department head VH Sonawane.
"Excavations in the Akota area have
revealed settlements dating back to the 7th and 8th centuries. We had discovered
bronze statues, particularly of the Jain faith," says Sonawane.