Adhichanallur Muthal Keezhadi Varai

A century of excavation has turned the soil of Tamil Nadu into one of the richest archives in South Asia. In twenty chapters, each opening with a tool of the archaeologist’s trade, Nivedita Louis takes a single find from a single site and tells its whole story: the people who uncovered it, how it came to light, what it is made of, and where it already waits for us in the verses of Sangam literature.

Then she widens the lens. Each object is set beside a kindred find from another civilisation: the bronze mirror of Adhichanallur beside ancient mirrors unearthed in Israel, the coarse cotton of Porunthal beside tartan, its horse stirrups beside the terracotta army of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang.

Archaeology, she argues, cannot be studied apart from literature, or apart from the world. Prescribed as a textbook for Tamil undergraduates at the Universities of Madras and Calicut, the book’s English translation by Krishnapriya S won the SRM Tamizh Perayam award for best translation.