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Maritime Trade Pattern and Early Urbanism in the Jaffna Peninsula of Northern Sri Lanka
No full textSri Lanka has played a key role in maritime trade on a global scale since Early Historic times to the colonial period. Archaeological evidence from harbors and ports of the Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka indicate very early trade connections with China to the east, Rome and Arabia to the west, and with India to the north. Ceramics and other artifacts associated with diverse cultures discovered from excavations and surveys in the Jaffna peninsula show that Jaffna has played a prominent role in Indian Ocean trade. Early urbanism and the emergence of trade related settlements in the Jaffna peninsula with the city of Kantharodai as a focal point had begun in the 6th century BCE. International trade and commerce of the Indian Ocean region had a direct impact on the development of urbanism in Kantharodai in the Jaffna peninsula, while the ports and trade network in the hinterland provide useful insights into the nature of economic activities and urbanism in the region. Finds from several key ports in the Jaffna peninsula and particularly the port on the island of Kayts indicate international trade. The city of Kantharodai as a focus for change, the city as the focus of power and domination, and the city as an organizing principle or creator of efficient space use are aspects explored in this paper
Editorial
Get PDFWelcome to the latest issue of Imagining SoTL. This issue consists of responses to a call for papers based on presentations and discussions sparked by the 2021 Virtual Forum for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning with a theme of “Catalyzing Conversations: Energizing SoTL.” In 2020, we canceled our symposium due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and, in 2021, like so many conference organizers, we decided that meeting online was the safest choice. We felt it was crucial to find ways to engage at a distance as we navigated our drastically changed work environments. Readers may notice that the content of certain articles directly reflects the pandemic context while others were impacted in terms of methodology or the thinking pursued
The Lifeways of Early Kantharodai, Sri Lanka
Get PDFIn the 1st millennium BCE Sri Lanka was central to the wide-spanning trading networks in the Western Indian Ocean region. Population agglomerations grew on the coast and further inland, where Anuradhapura emerged as the major central place. Parallel agglomerations formed in the south in Tissamaharama and in the north on Jaffna Peninsula in Kantharodai. The site of Kantharodai on the northern tip of Sri Lanka is the largest known early historic mound site on the Jaffna Peninsula, thought to represent the ancient centre of the region. The Early Historic occupation of Kantharodai began ca. 400-100 BCE. In our study we focus on the older historic occupation phase at Kantharodai, represented by a rich midden deposit of domestic refuse that offer insights into the environmental conditions faced by early occupants of the site and their modes of subsistence. We provide a glimpse into the subsistence strategies of the earliest settled population in Kantharodai who augmented a diet based on domesticated livestock through multiple wild species from forests, swamps, mangroves and marine habitats. Based on the faunal evidence from early Kantharodai, this complex socio-economic structure appears to have been in operation, confirming proposed models of mixed economies in operation in the Early Historic period of the region
Palynological Evidence from Sediment Samples Associated with the Early Holocene Human Skeleton from Fa Hien-lena, Sri Lanka
Get PDFThis paper highlights the value of pollen-analytical studies in the prehistoric archaeological context at the Fa Hien rock shelter. The Fa Hien rock shelter located in the Wet Zone of southwestern Sri Lanka has been occupied by the earliest anatomically modern humans in South Asia, dating from the late Pleistocene to the middle Holocene. The pollen evidence from the samples associated with the early Holocene human skeleton from this site has been used to assess the burial context and palynological taphonomy. Pollen data analysis indicates that high taphonomic impact occurred on the pollen grains in the depositional context, possibly due to reworking, burning, mechanical pressure and other possible human and animal activities. Furthermore, the pollen assemblage appears to have been primarily derived from the lowland rainforest, including disturbed habitats. Along with archaeological stratigraphy and radiometric dating, the pollen assemblage can be used to make broad inferences on the burial contexts and environment of the rock shelter occupants, while discussing the significance of forensic palynology in the Fa Hien archaeological context
Siran Upendra Deraniyagala - Bibliography
Get PDFSiran Upendra Deraniyagala (1942-2021), pioneer Sri Lankan prehistorian and archaeologist published his scholarly work in diverse venues. In this document, the disseminated work of Siran Deraniyagala is compiled as a bibliography. Books, journal articles, book chapters, which incorporate accounts of Sri Lanka’s prehistory comprise the valuable academic work of Siran Deraniyagala. Administration reports composed when he served as the Director General of the Department of Archaeology in Sri Lanka and several Sinhala publications, presentations and lectures are also included in this bibliography
The Evolution of Microliths at Batadomba-lena, Sri Lanka
No full textUnresolved questions about the nature and coherence of microlithic production in Sri Lanka underlay many discussions about the microlith tradition in this region as well as the origins of those technologies and norms. Previous studies have not examined whether there were changes over time in the form of the microliths themselves, and in this paper, we conduct a geometric morphometric (GM) assessment of the shape differences over time at the Batadomba-lena site in the Wet Zone of Sri Lanka, excavated by Deraniyagala and Perera. We show that there were complex shifts in microlith shapes, with diversification of forms over time. This finding challenges conventional typological depictions of sameness within microliths and introduces a new approach to studying the evolution of microlith form
Signature Pedagogies -- A Cautionary Tale
Get PDFThe idea that each discipline in higher education has its own unique "signature pedagogy" has gained popularity since Lee Shulman first proposed the idea in 2005. But can the focus on signature pedagogies in SOTL work be a problem as well as a benefit? This essay explores both the history of signature pedagogies and the possible downside of the use of this concept to frame SOTL research and teaching informed by SOTL
An Ecological Approach to Studying Sri Lanka’s Past: Contributions of Siran Deraniyagala
Get PDFAn appreciation of Siran Deraniyagala with a focus on zooarchaeology