TS chamber tombs reveal burial secrets
Skeletons were exhumed, buried again in 1000 BC
Chamber tombs recently unearthed in the forest hillocks ofJai shank arBhu pal ap ally and Bhadradri-Kothagudem district along the Godavari from Tadwai to Bhadrachalam, throw new light on burial practices.
“Chamber tombs are secondary burial chambers. After death, when the flesh is gone, the skeleton and its remains are buried in chamber tombs. They date back to 1000 BC and 2nd century AD,” said Mr S.S. Rangacharyulu, archaeology consultant and former deputy director of the archaeology and museums department.
Mr Rangacharyulu studied some of the chamber tombs in detail, backed by department director N.R. Visalatchy.
After rock art, megalithic burials are the most important monuments in Telangana state and are found in hundreds of villages. Chamber tombs are built on hillocks and also referred to as cromlechs and dolmens.
They are constructed with dressed slabs and look like a chamber with four or more orthostats — slabs on three sides with an opening on one side and a huge rectangular capstone. Capstones are quite heavy, some of them are 4 metres by 4 metres and 40 to 50-cm thick. The entrance to most dolmens is at the centre.
“It seems that most were family burials. There is a facility for reuse. There are one ore more stone sarcophagi inside the structure. Since these are built with stones, mostly above the ground level on hillocks, they are known as chamber tombs,” Mr Rangacharyulu said.
Among chamber tombs, one in Galaba (Galabagutta) and Kachanapalle (P edd ha pa ru pu gut ta) in this district are rare and were not studied.
“We found graffiti marks, cruciforms and anthropomorphic figures. There are more than 300 chamber tombs on this hillock. The site is important since cruciforms depicting male and female breasts, anthropomorphic figures are lying in front of the chamber tombs. These figures, which are lying in front of the chamber tombs, indicate that originally they were in a standing position,” he said.
“Inside some chambers, stone sarcophagi are located with graffiti marks such as arrow and trident marks like ‘ma’ in Brahmi script of 2nd century BC. In one chamber tomb, six sarcophagi were found which indicates that it was a family burial,” he said.
In Kachanapalle, hundreds of chamber tombs are scattered 8 km from the village on the hillocks locally known as Peddhaparupugutta and Nandigutta. Almost all the burials consist of stone sarcophagi and were provided with lids.
“The erection of huge chamber tombs with dressed stones and carvings of sculptures representing the human form indicate that the megalithic community were culturally advanced and they had sophisticated metal implements and knowledge of geometry to cut huge stones to the required sizes,” said Mr Rangacharyulu. In Aihole and Mottur in north Karnataka, cruciforms were also found, but they were small and crude.