

KANNUR: After eleven days of hectic mining, which unearthed 35950 cannonballs, one of the largest cache of ammunition from an archaeological site in the world, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) completed the excavation works at the Fort St Angelo here on Sunday.

"It is a really huge harvest of cannonballs, and now the task is to preserve it after segregating and chemically treating the balls," said Superintending archaeologist T Sreelakshmi. "We are not sure whether such a huge stock has ever been unearthed from anywhere in the world and we have to corroborate with evidences from history to find out why such a huge quantity was dumped in the pits, thus making sure it would not be reused."

On Sunday alone, 5300 cannonballs were unearthed and the numbers exceeded many times what they expected when the chance excavation began on December 10. The labourers spotted it in a site while digging up the earth for electricity cables works for the upcoming light-and-sound show there the previous day, following which the excavation began. However, as the excavation started, the archaeologists found the huge cache in four pits, thus increasing the mystery.

"We wound up the works after unearthing all the balls we found in four pits over the last few days, and it is really a surprising one," said ASI’s assistant archaeologist C Kumaran. However, he ruled out the possibility of further excavation now. In the site there were no further traces of cannonballs and hence the decision, he said. The next task is to preserve it in the fort alone after treating it chemically and also ascertaining the period which it belong to, he added.

"It is a long process to clean and chemically treat the cannonballs, which might take a few weeks, before which we would not be able to tell anything about the history," he added.

Fort St Angelo, the historic monument on a tip of land jutting out into the sea, was built by the Portuguese in 1505. Later it changed hands by the occupying forces, and was controlled by the Dutch, the British and also the Arakkal dynasty of Kannur.