Keezhadi Excavation Site

Keezhadi, or Keeladi, is the excavation site of a Sangam-period settlement by Keezhadi town in Sivaganga district, about 12 kilometres south-east of Madurai, on the bank of the Vaigai River. A 2013 survey of the Vaigai valley listed it among 293 places with archaeological remains, and digging began in June 2015 under Amarnath Ramakrishnan of the Archaeological Survey of India; from the fourth phase the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology took over. The area under excavation spreads over 80 acres.

The second phase alone turned up more than six thousand artefacts, among them jars, wells and seals, and the fourth produced 5,820 more. Radiocarbon tests have dated samples to around the 3rd century BCE, and one from 353 centimetres down to about 580 BCE, with the settlement lived in until the 1st century CE. Claims that the inscribed Tamil-Brahmi potsherds are older than the 3rd century BCE have been questioned, as many came from a disturbed pit.