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PATTANAM, India -- Pottery shards, beads, Roman copper coins, and ancient wine bottles litter the strata beneath this small seaside village in India's southern Kerala state. The 250 families, mostly agricultural laborers, who live in Pattanam, 260 kilometers (161 miles) north of Kerala's capital Thiruvananthapuram, find the objects pretty, but would rather dig up the ground and build larger homes. But according to archaeologists K.P. Shajan and V. Selvakumar, they may be destroying the remnants of Muziris, a well-documented trading port where Rome and India met almost 3,000 years ago. They say that, based on remote sensing data, a river...

Archaeologists unearth Roman era artefacts in Kerala From our ANI Correspondent Pattanam (Kerala), Mar 23: What began as exploratory studies in Kerala, has thrown up enough artefacts and structures of two millennia old Indo-Roman trade era to delight archaeologists, who are looking for the lost port of Muziris. Archaeological teams in Pattanam village, near the port city of Kochi have been working on a site, which has yielded pottery, amphora, beads and other artefacts that are reminiscent of the ancient Romans. "The initial studies carried out in this region have amply indicated that there was a Roman presence. The Roman...

Coins dating from the Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire (66 CE-70 CE) were discovered by archeologists during excavations near the southern wall of the Temple Mount on Monday, according to the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. The archeological dig, run by Dr. Eilat Mazar of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, uncovered dozens of bronze coins measuring approximately 1.5 cm., as well as numerous fragments of pottery vessels. The vessels, mainly jars and cooking pots, were left behind by Jewish residents who hid in a large cave that measured seven meters by 14 m. The...

The first construction boom began about 2,000 years ago, when Ashoka the Great was founding the first Indian empire, when Julius Caesar reigned over Rome, when traders from the Mediterranean found their way to what is now an obscure Maharastra village... But another construction boom threatens the existence of an area they say could well reveal itself as "the Pompeii of India", the legendary Roman city buried by a volcano and lost for 1,600 years... A dusty village museum houses a treasure-trove of 23,852 pieces of stone and terracotta sculptures, replicas of Roman coins and lamps, miniature inkpots, jewellery and...

Pattanam, a small village located 25 km north of Kochi, is the new pilgrimage spot on the international archaeological map. This quiet place, archaeologists now confirm, was once the flourishing port known to the Romans as Muziris and sung in praise by the Tamil Sangam poets as Muciri. Every year since 2005, excavations have yielded artefacts, structures and even a canoe in one instance to confirm this conclusion. This year has also been productive for archaeologists. A figure of a pouncing lion carved in great detail on a semi precious stone and a bright micro metal object with intricate designs...

For those who think financial fraud or circulating fake currencies is a modern day phenomenon, an ancient Roman coin mould on display at the Department of Archaeology, Museums and Heritage in the city is a startling revelation. The Roman coin mould, which is being displayed for the first time since its excavation in 1993, indicates that fake coins were in circulation around 19 to 20 centuries ago. The terracotta mould is among the most important objects displayed at the exhibition, apart from terracotta figurines, iron objects, bronze dies, stone beads. M S Krishnamurthy, a retired professor of Archaeology who led...

Pompeii pottery may rewrite history Heather Catchpole ABC Science Online Monday, 8 November 2004 A broken plate is one of the pieces in the puzzle of how ancient cultures traded (Image: Jaye Pont) Archaeologists may need to change their view of Pompeii's role in trade and commerce, after a ceramics expert's recent discovery. Australian researcher Jaye Pont from the Museum of Ancient Cultures at Sydney's Macquarie University says people who lived in Pompeii bought their pottery locally and didn't import it. Pont said the find could "make waves" among archaeologists looking at trade in the Mediterranean. And she said researchers...

Search for India's ancient city Roman amphora pieces abound in Pattanam Archaeologists working on India's south-west coast believe they may have solved the mystery of the location of a major port which was key to trade between India and the Roman Empire - Muziris, in the modern-day state of Kerala. For many years, people have been in search of the almost mythical port, known as Vanchi to locals. Much-recorded in Roman times, Muziris was a major centre for trade between Rome and southern India - but appeared to have simply disappeared. Now, however, an investigation by two archaeologists - KP...

One way to understand the implications of the archaeological discoveries at Pattanam is to delve into the amazing wealth of data from the excavations at the lost Ptolemic-Roman port city of Berenike, on Egypt's Red Sea coast. During the Ptolemic-Roman period (third century B.C. to sixth century A.D), Berenike served as a key transit port between ancient Egypt and Rome on one side and the Red Sea-Indian Ocean regions, including South Arabia, East Africa, India and Sri Lanka, on the other. This ancient port city was well-connected by roads from the Nile that passed through the Eastern Desert of Egypt...