New find to guage exact age of ancient Dwarka

NEW DELHI:  The exact age of Dwarka, the ancient submerged city off Gujarat coast, can now finally be determined.
   
 In a major breakthrough, archaeologists have excavated from the ruins of Dwarka a wooden block that promises to solve the mystery about the exact age of the submerged city believed
by many to belong to Lord Krishna.
    
"Now that we have found wood, we are confident of dating the excavations. We will know exactly how old is this submerged city," Alok Tripathi, Superindenting Archaeologist of the Underwater Archaeology Wing of the Archaeological Survey of India.

Archaeologists will now use the carbon dating technique to determine the exact age of the ruins. The latest excavation at the site that began early this year concluded last week.

The earlier excavations, that first began about 40 years ago, had only revealed stones, beads, glass and terracotta pieces.
   
"The operations resulted in retrieval of wooden block from a submerged circular structure. The blocks were joined so well with the help of wooden dowels and nails that they remained in situ despite heavy surfs and strong currents for a long period," said Tripathi, who is also an expert diver.
    
The samples of the excavation have been brought to the capital and shall soon be given for lab testing.
    
Though there had been previous excavations, each cited different dates and were based on the interpretations of scholars as there was no material evidence to back those claims.

The first excavation in Dwarka, carried out by the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, Pune and the Department of Archaeology, Government of Gujarat in 1963, had revealed artefacts that were 2000 years old.
    
Several other excavations followed, all revealing different artefacts and to different time periods.
    
Two years ago, the Underwater Archaeology Wing (UAW) of the Archaeological Survey of India undertook the systematic study of Dwarka and after thorough analysis of previous researches, started excavation work in January with the clear objective "to know the antiquity of the site based on scientific study of the material evidence."
   
The holistic nature of the excavations can be judged by the fact that for the first time "excavations were conducted simultaneously on land, near famous Dwarkadhish temple, and also offshore so that finds from all the excavations can be analysed, correlated and studied scientifically," Tripathi
said