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Bandarawela Prehistoric Site |
Bandarawela Prehistoric Site, also known as Church Hill Prehistoric Site (Sinhala: බණ්ඩාරවෙල ප්රාග්ඓතිහාසික ස්ථානය), is an Open-air Prehistoric Site located in the premises of Department of Meteorology in Bandarawela town in Badulla District, Sri Lanka. It is considered one of the sites in the Bandarawela region that is important in revealing the traces of country's so-called Balangoda Culture in open-air contexts (Perera, 2010).
History
Discovery
Situated in the upland dry zone of the country, this area was first discovered in 1907 by the Sarasins of Basle, two Swiss anthropologists who recoreded the collection of stone artifacts from the hilltops surrounding the present Anglican Church (Sitrampalam, 1987). The site was later investigated by Seligmann in 1908, followed by excavations carried out by Hartley in 1913 and 1914 (Hartley, 1913; Priyadarshani and Gunasena, 2017). From the excavations, Hartley collected plentiful artefacts and some of them are presently housed in the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge University (Perera, 2010).
The site was reinvestigated in 1940 by H.A. and H.V. Noone (Perera, 1975).
Dating
Excavations done at the site have yielded three dates ranging from ca. 7,300 to 4,150 BP (Deraniyagala, 2007).Related Posts
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References
Books, Journal Articles
1) Deraniyagala, S.U., 2007. The prehistory and protohistory of Sri Lanka. The art and archaeology of Sri Lanka I. Central Cultural Fund. p. 7.
2) Hartley, C. 1913. The stone implements of Ceylon. Spolia Zeylanica 9(34):117-23.
3) Perera, H.N. 2010. Prehistoric Sri Lanka: Late Pleistocene rockshelters and an open-air site. British Archaeological Report (international series) 2142. Oxford: Archaeopress. pp.7,22.
4) Perera, N.P., 1975. The Human Influences on the Natural Vegetation of the Sri Lanka Highlands.
5) Priyadarshani, S. A. N.; Gunasena, I. P. P., 2017. Pauranika Sthana Saha Smaraka: Badulla Distrikkaya (In Sinhala). Department of Archaeology (Sri Lanka). ISBN: 955-9159-48-8. pp.50-51.
6) Sitrampalam, S.K., 1987. Survey of Pre and Protohistoric Studies in Sri Lanka. Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, 46, pp.137-149.
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%Attribution
To Whom
LankaPradeepa.com extends its gratitude to Malsha M. Ranasinghe for providing the necessary photographs required for this article. All the photos are published here with the permission of the author.
