Spectrometry suggests they’re not of local origin

Surprises don’t seem to end at the excavation at Pattanam, 25 km from Kochi, conducted by the Kerala Council of Historical Research (KCHR).

During the ninth season of excavation this year, a row of eight tubular jars without bottom portions was found. The potter had deliberately left them open at both ends.

Altogether, 12 such tubular jars were found, eight in a vertical position, three that have fallen down and one with the portion broken. The jars are 40-cm tall, and the diameter of their rim is about 13 cm. They were found in the 61st trench, the latest to be excavated.

“These tubular jars are a puzzle. Nothing can be stored in them,” said P.J. Cherian, Director of the KCHR and the Pattanam excavation. The row of eight vertical jars was cut into a clay platform made of bricks, pottery and tile fragments. “The bottom of all these jars is open. They were hand-made,” he said.

The neck and rim of these jars resembled the torpedo jars found in the Mesopotamian and south Arabian regions with which Pattanam, or the ancient Muciri Pattinam, had trade links.

“But when we dug further, we found that, unlike the torpedo jars, the bottom of all these jars was open. The mystery deepened when we scooped the soil sediment in the jars. It did not yield any clue,” Dr. Cherian said.

Researchers estimated that these jars, stratigraphically, belonged to the Early Historic period (fourth century CE) when the Indian Ocean transformed into a trade lake with links to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean littoral.

Pattanam is identified as the legendary port Muziris mentioned in the Greco-Roman classical sources. Many poems in the Tamil Sangam literature (third century BCE to third century CE) celebrate it as Muciri.