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3,700-year-old stone coffin in Tamil Nadu redraws Harappan age south-north trade map
The Island
|September 23, 2025
Smoke from a funeral pyre over 3,700 years ago left behind a trail of charcoal. That faint trace, sealed inside a terracotta sarcophagus buried in Kilnamandi village of Tiruvannamalai district, has now rewritten Tamil Nadu's ancient past.
Radiocarbon analysis in a US laboratory dated the deposit to 1,692 BCE, placing this burial in the late Harappan age and hinting at trade links between southern India and regions as far away as Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Burial offerings scattered around the stone coffin tell their own story. Etched carnelian beads, once prized in Harappan centres, lay beside graffiti-inscribed potsherds.
This story is from the September 23, 2025 edition of The Island.
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