Oral Traditions of the Lepchas: An Archaeological enquiry in Sikkim
Funding Agency : Inter-University Accelerator Centre, New Delhi
Principal Investigator: Sukanya Sharma
Co-investigator:
Duration/Starting Year: 2023-10-01 to 2026-09-30
Status: Ongoing
The paucity of absolute dates in the region in the archaeological context has led to Sikkim being a gap in the archaeological continuum - spatially and temporally despite being sandwiched between mighty cultural entities on all four sides – China (formerly Tibet) in The North, Bhutan in the East, India in the South and Nepal in the West. The data is collected from Daramdin, West Sikkim in the form of pot sherds, soil and charcoal is subjected to various non-destructive scientific techniques in order to understand different characteristics of the samples. Among these, Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDS) is done to understand the elemental composition of the materials – clay and soil samples. Powder X-ray Diffraction (pXRD) was done for the same samples to understand the mineral composition as well as to indicate the firing range and firing atmosphere of the ceramics. Thermogavimetric Analysis-Differential Scanning Calorimetry (TGA-DSC) was conducted to understand the thermal behaviour of the sample and the temperature at which they were heated. The above experiments were done in Central Instruments Facility, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. The charcoal samples collected from different depths correspond to the depths from where the potsherds are also collected. Therefore, dating these charcoal samples will be one of the significant factors in understanding the age of the corelated evidences in the same stratigraphy.