a sand-bar from the Bay of Bengal, from which it is further sheltered by dunes and coconut palms. A part of the eastern bank of the lagoon stands some 20 ft. above the water and from the scarp project the jagged ends of successive brick buildings to which the mound owes its being. To the villagers the site is known as Arikamedu; French archaeologists have preferred to name it from a neighbouring village, Virampatnam. The fragments of walling were noted as long ago as the 18th century, but it was in 1937 that the site first attracted archaeological attention.

In that year village children brought to a local French antiquary a number of relics which they had picked up on the surface, amongst them a gem (now lost) which is reported to have borne an intaglio portrait of Augustus. Subsequently French and Indian investigators carried out some useful if summary digging on the site, and amongst the resultant finds the present writer in 1944 detected sherds of Italian red-glazed 'Arretine' ware and of amphorae from the Mediterranean, together with a fragment of a Roman lamp and a second Graeco-Roman gem, an untrimmed crystal intaglio representing a cupid and a bird. The Arretine ware was of the early 1st century A.D. In 1945 a systematic excavation was carried out for three months by the Archaeological Survey of India under the writer's direction, and the work was resumed for the French Government by Mr. J. M. Casal in 1947-8.⁴ The accumulated material of Western origin supplements with important detail the general historical and numismatic evidence given above, whilst, from the Indian standpoint, it has for the first time provided a firm and widely applicable datum for the associated native culture. The excavations have thus combined in a happy manner the interests alike of Western and of Indian archaeology.

Much of the town has been removed by the river, and its former landward extent is unknown, but the excavations of man and nature have identified a nucleus over 400 yards from north to south along the bank. Under the southern part of this area have been found the traces of a village associated with smooth black-and-brown pottery of the distinctive kind used by the builders of megalithic tombs in South India between c. 200 B.C. and A.D. 50. This village, like its modern equivalents in the neighbourhood, doubtless consisted of simple fisher-folk who caught the gullible fish of the region from the shore or from small outriggers, gathered the fruits and juices of the palms, cultivated rice-patches, and lived in a leisurely

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

⁴ For the 1945 and earlier work, see Ancient India, No. 2 (Delhi, 1946), pp. 17ff.; for the 1947-48 work, see J. M. Casal, Fouilles de Virampatnam-Arikamedu (Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1949); also Aspects of Archaeology (Essays to O. G. S. Crawford) (London, 1951), pp. 354ff.; and Germania 152, p. 389.