“It will be the first Polish excavation project in India,” said the academy’s Marek Woźniak, who will head the mission, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Archaeologists will work in the village of Pattanam, in the southern Indian state of Kerala, not far from the Indian Ocean, officials said.
According to scholars, Pattanam hides some of the remnants of Muziris, an ancient transshipment port used some 2,000 years ago by vessels carrying goods to Europe through Egypt, among other routes.
Muziris was a major port that was written about by Roman authors, including Pliny the Elder, the Nauka w Polsce website reported.
Woźniak said the idea to look for the remains of Muziris had been inspired by his long-time work for an archeological mission in the Egyptian Red Sea port of Berenice.
The Polish scientist said: “In the Hellenic period, Berenice rapidly expanded its contacts with other continents, eventually including India.”
In the centuries following the Roman conquest of Egypt, the new rulers turned Berenice into an important centre of transoceanic trade between Africa, the Middle East and India, according to Nauka w Polsce.
Wroński said this inspired him to work with Indian archaeologists to further explore “points of contact … between radically different cultures and the effects of these interactions.”
Exploring ‘ancient globalisation of trade’
Wroński added: “By carrying out excavations on both ends of the western part of the maritime Spice Trail, we are securing an amazing opportunity for Polish science to join research on the ancient globalisation of trade, one of the greatest achievements of human history, diplomacy and economic thought.”
He added that the route from India through Egypt and the Middle East to Europe continued to play a major role in later centuries.
Polish archaeologists will be seeking to reconstruct the architecture of the ancient Muziris City, according to officials.
Another research aim is to analyse the economic, logistical and political links between Muziris and other ports and cities of the region, Nauka w Polsce reported.
Before excavation work begins in Pattanam in March, Polish scientists will team up with colleagues from India’s PAMA research centre in the autumn for an exploratory study of the nearby Cardamom Hills, “an area which was the source of all the goods brought by Roman merchants from the Indian state of Kerala,” Wroński said.
(pm/gs)
Source: naukawpolsce.pl