Archeological Survey of Fort/Tomb in Madras (Chennai), India
This article will focus on Madras (Chennai), India, where the Thomas Christians are said to have been planted over the centuries. Their heritage is said to date back to the time of Christ, after Whom the Apostle Thomas was said to have migrated to the East to preach the Gospel of Christ. It is held by local tradition and lore in India that Thomas died in this area of India. There is a tomb dedicated to him, with a shrine and altar in Madras and it is here that the excavation of the area is to take place. It has historical significance and could yield positive historical findings relating to the travels of Thomas, and whether or not there are any indications or any evidence of his having lived, preached and died in Madras.
The Survey, which is the "systematically organized, thorough inspection of the ground surface for archeological remains," is a standard part of the archeological inspection and here in Madras, the issue is one of modernization, for the city has literally grown up around the excavation site (Opitz, Ryzewski, Cherry, Moloney, 2015, p. 523). The team of archeologists, therefore, will have to excavate from within the tomb and around the tomb in order to discover the actual ground surface below the application of roads, highways, asphalt, tarp, building foundations, etc.
Pedestrian survey is not very applicable or useful in this terrain since much of the ground has been built over. What is needed is penetration of the overgrowth to get inside and beneath the tomb, to dig under the city, in effect to find the historical remnants, if any, of the early Thomas Christians in India.
The strata or occupation phases can be divided into time periods -- thus, we have the 1st century AD which would be the time of Thomas in India, of which there are numerous signs through the centuries of traditional remembrance, such as crosses, churches, scripts, holy sites, etc. Also in Kerala these sites are found are still venerated today (Abernethy, 2009). Sites are also preserved in the area of Thomas of Kana, where Syrian connections were established with the Orthodox Church up through the 4th century AD. The Portuguese period is next beginning in the 16th century, so there is a long gap of practically a millennium in which these sites were left alone, so that is where the actual dig is to focus, on this missing historical strata. The Dutch, French and British arrival in the 17th to 18th centuries brought a Protestant tradition to India, so again that is another strata, and today there is the modern strata that has built over these past strata. So in effect we are dealing with five serious layers or strata at this site.
We begin by using remote sensing techniques plus techniques such as photogrammetry, which allows us to obtain "spatial measurements and other geometrically reliable derived products from photographs" (Lillesand, 2015, p. 146). A 3-D model of the site at Madras is first produced along with excavation work within the tomb itself as the first three strata are explored. What is found is the missing historical strata and below that is where the ultimate focus is.
The Portuguese strata reveals a cluster of Indo-Portuguese artwork within the tomb itself. This represents the idea that the Portuguese used this site to promote both the indigenous religion, which they shared with the people, being Christians themselves, as well as their authority over the region, bringing back the Christian heritage that had lain dormant for many centuries prior to their colonization of Southern India. Thus, this strata reveals helpful archaeological information about the site, in terms of historical dates, records, burials, gifts, positions, terms of officialdom, etc. There are scripts in Latin as well as in Portuguese and there is nothing to be seen of a native India script or dialect. It is apparent that the Portuguese in authority used their own language and imposed it on the natives here in this environment. Moreover, it appears that this was a welcome transition as the tomb sits beneath a church that was erected and there is evidence of much alms-giving and steep rewards of gold and fine art dedicated to the church and to the officials also buried in this strata.
The Map of St. George Fort in Madras indicates the topography of the site and the dwellings of the religious. It provides a geographical...
The alternate plan of the French in the following century (18th) during their arrival depicts another view of the fort and accommodations made to the modern strata that are also evident on the surface level of the archeological dig and facilitate in the photogrammetric representation of the surface area used in the creation of the 3-D model.
Ground penetrating radar reveals a number of caverns beneath the tomb that will be explored in the excavation period, and these stretch on for some length, as the radar depicts. These could be explained by a kind of catacomb experience similar to that in ancient Roman times when persecutions drove the Christians to practice their prayers and services underground to avoid detection. As tradition holds, the natives were hostile to Thomas and the early Christians and drove them underground for many years and it was only when the Jesuit Francis Xavier came to India in the 16th century that the Christian tradition was again re-established in public, though even this tense for natives who practiced the religion of Hinduism and were hostile to the Christians. Thus, these cavernous regions may be explained by a similar experience.
Excavation of them reveals that this idea is indeed probable, because there are many images of Christianity on the walls of these caverns, which are formed out of brick and rock. The paintings are still visible and appear to be undisturbed.
From a stratigraphy perspective, the rock in this area of the ground does not reveal a great deal about transformation or geological shifts over the centuries. The ground can be used or tested, however, to establish dates and this is done so to provide a more accurate assessment of the paintings within these caverns, to see exactly from which historical strata period we are examining.
The Harris-matrix is used to better understand the chronology of this site. Fig. 3 provides a visual representation of this usage. If we start at the bottom of the figure, the events are ordered as a build-up in terms of one wall going over another or set of paint going over another. Thus, layers are laid on top of layers, and new construction is built on top of old construction. This is evident in the excavation of Cavern 1, which produces evidence of backfill through one way on the south end of the cavern, over which is a wall. It may be that this served as a room for early Christians even before the days of the Portuguese and may be evidence of the missing historic period when the Thomas Christians were driven underground. There is a desire to maintain stratigraphic control in this area and to not do too much undercutting so as preserve the integrity of the site, but from what we can tell immediately upon this portion of the dig is that there is some evidence of what we are looking for, namely a portion of the underground tomb that confirms the existence of a pre-Portuguese Thomas Christian service.
This is confirmed by date testing the interior of this room off the cavern behind the wall and the date puts it at roughly 6th century AD. Thus, we can conclude that underneath the Fort of St. George there existed a type of catacomb similar to that of the ancient Roman days. Here we find indeed several tombs of the early Thomas Christians and the language is not Latin or Portuguese or any modern Indian language either. There is some script that appears to be similar to Sanskrit and this ancient language tells us even more about the nature of this cavern, although there may be an ancient form of Tamil seen in this portion of the cave in small snatches as well.
There are some bones still or what appear to be mineral casts of the bones, fossils of skeletons that may have been here for centuries. These will be carbon tested for a more accurate representation of their date but they indicate that this cavern is indeed one of the lost signs of the missing historical period that this excavation set out to find. There is also some Chrstian signia in the forms of crosses made of gold, which may be from a later date, judging from the artwork, which appears to be Indo-Portuguese. This may indicate that the planners of the Fort were well aware of these caverns and decorated or ornamented them suitably in order to curry favor with the remnants of the Thomas Christians still…
