Iron Age: India

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Originated in Tamil Nadu?

January 24, 2025: The Times of India

An artifact found at Sivagalai. The new findings on use of iron in the TN landscape may push back the dawn of Iron Age by 2,000 years
From: January 24, 2025: The Times of India

Iron artifacts testing in research labs, January 2025
From: January 24, 2025: The Times of India

Samples from Sivagalai were analysed by three leading research labs — Beta Analytics in US, Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, and Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences in Lucknow. “They all dated the objects to around the same period,” Stalin said, asserting that more metallurgical analysis of the iron objects and future excavations in iron ore-bearing zones could further strengthen these findings.


Scholars believe these dates suggest a contemporary Iron Age civilisation in southern India during the same period as Indus Valley civilisation in north and northwest India. “When cultural zones located north of Vindhyas experienced Copper Age, the region south of Vindhyas might have entered Iron Age due to limited availability of commercially exploitable copper ore,” the report said.


Tamil Nadu archaeology department study has revealed that more than 90% of the ancient graffiti marks found at 140 archaeological sites in the state have parallels or similarities with those of Indus Valley (also known as Harappan civilisation) that existed from around 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE.
“The recent radiocarbon dates indicate that when Indus Valley experienced Copper Age, south India was in Iron Age. In this sense, Iron Age of south India and Copper Age of the Indus were contemporary,” said archaeologist Rajan, the report’s co-author.


ASI’s former director general Rakesh Tewari described the findings from Sivagalai as “a turning point” in Indian archaeology. “Once it appeared that when Indus Valley was flourishing in the western part of the country, other areas did not have contemporary cultur- es. But now things are changing,” he said. Before the latest findings, the earliest known iron objects in Tamil Nadu were dated to 2172 BCE from excavations at Mayiladumparai in Krishnagiri district.


The samples from Sivagalai were analysed using advanced techniques such as accelerometer mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS14C) dating for charcoal and optically stimulated luminescence (OLS) dating for ceramics. A total of 11 dates were obtained from the site, with six dating earlier than 2400 BCE.


More than 85 iron objects, including knives, arrowheads, rings, chisels, axes, and swords, were collected from various levels within and outside the urns.


Another notable finding from the region was at Adichanallur, also in Thoothukudi district, where a charcoal sample linked with an iron object was dated to 2517 BCE.


In comparison, sites like Brahmagiri in Karnataka and Gachibowli near Hyderabad have yielded Iron Age dating of 2140 BCE and 2200 BCE, respectively.


“For the first time in the world, smelted iron has been dated back to the middle of the third millennium BCE. It is not just a significant discovery in the Indian context, but also in the context of archaeology of the world,” said Dilip Kumar Chakrabarti, emeritus professor of South Asian Archaeology at Cambridge University, adding, “About 60 years ago, the antiquity of iron in India did not go beyond the 6th century BCE. From then to the 25th century BCE is a big jump.”

TN may be the birthplace of Iron Age, says study

Chennai: The Iron Age could have originated in Tamil Nadu over 5,300 years ago, much earlier than previously believed, as per recent findings from burial urns at Sivagalai in Thoothukudi district near the southern tip of India. 
New dating of charcoal samples found with iron objects at the site reveals dates of 3345 BCE and 3259 BCE, making this the world’s earliest known use of iron. Till now, the Hittite empire (Turkiye) was believed to have first used iron in 1380 BCE.


“We have scientifically established that iron was introduced 5,300 years ago in the Tamil landscape. The Iron Age began from Tamil land,” said CM M K Stalin, while releasing Thursday the study ‘Antiquity of Iron: Recent Radiometric Dates from Tamil Nadu’, by KRajan and R Sivananthan.