The excavations
Keeladi was identified in a survey of the Vaigai valley by an Archaeological Survey of India team led by K. Amarnath Ramakrishna, which began excavating in 2015. The excavations uncovered a settlement with walls and floors of fired brick, terracotta ring wells, covered drains, and workshops, together with beads of carnelian and glass, terracotta figurines, gaming pieces, spindle whorls and iron objects. The finds pointed to a substantial town of the early historic period, close to Madurai, the Pandya capital of the Sangam poems.
In 2017 the Archaeological Survey of India transferred Ramakrishna and reduced the scale of its work, and the Tamil Nadu government took over the excavation through its state archaeology department. The change led to a public controversy in Tamil Nadu, with accusations that the central government was downplaying a site that supported claims for the antiquity of Tamil civilisation, which the Survey denied. Disputes over the publication of the Survey's own report continued for years.
The inscriptions and the dates
Among the finds are many potsherds inscribed with short texts in Tamil-Brahmi, the script of early Tamil, mostly personal names. In 2019 the Tamil Nadu department published a report giving radiocarbon dates for the layers containing inscribed sherds back to the sixth century BCE. If correct, these would make Tamil-Brahmi as old as or older than the Ashokan Brahmi of the third century BCE, then generally taken as the earliest securely dated Indian script.
The early dates have been widely publicised in Tamil Nadu and are part of the curriculum there. Other scholars have cautioned that radiocarbon dates from charcoal in a layer may not date the potsherds found with it, and that the earliest dates are a minority among a wider range. The debate parallels discussions of early Brahmi at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka and at other Tamil sites such as Kodumanal and Porunthal.
Significance
Whatever the final dating, Keeladi has shown that the Vaigai valley had an urban settlement with literate inhabitants in the early historic period, providing archaeological context for the world described in Sangam literature, and that early Tamil society was not only rural and pastoral. The site has no clear evidence of religious structures, which has been noted in discussions of the period. A museum at the site opened in 2023, and excavation continues at Keeladi and the nearby sites of Kondagai, Agaram and Manalur.
Further reading
- Chakrabarti, Dilip K. The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology. Oxford University Press, 2006
- Shulman, David. Tamil: A Biography. Harvard University Press, 2016
- Sastri, K. A. Nilakanta. A History of South India. Oxford University Press, 1955
See also
- Madurai — Madurai is a city on the Vaigai river in southern Tamil Nadu, the capital of the Pandya kings from the early historic period, later seat of a short-lived sultanate and of the Nayakas, and the home of the Meenakshi temple.
- Pandya dynasty — The Pandya dynasty was an ancient Tamil dynasty centered on Madurai in southern Tamil Nadu, with a documented history running from the Sangam period in the 3rd century BCE to its overthrow by Delhi Sultanate forces in the early 14th century CE.
- South Indian megalithic culture — The megalithic culture of South India is the Iron Age tradition, from around the late second millennium BCE to the early centuries BCE, in which communities across the peninsula buried their dead in monuments of large stones and in urns, with iron tools, weapons and black-and-red pottery.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.