Archaeological Camera at Fort Kochi turns 2,600-year-old sites into art

Does a photograph stop being documentation and become an artifact? Can prehistoric artifacts be art? Mohamed A’s exhibition at Kara in Fort Kochi says yes.

The photographer as archaeologist

Photographs in archaeology are usually afterthoughts. They are technical aids and figure numbers in reports. They are also illustrations for journal articles.

The photographer stays invisible, a “spectral non-presence” as Mohamed A says. What happens when we flip this relationship? What does the photographer see at a site? What stories come out when the camera finds things rather than just recording them?

That is the main question of “Archaeological Camera”. It is a tour through Kerala’s prehistoric landscape. It spans the Neolithic to the Iron Age, from 4,000 BCE to roughly 400 CE.

Sites that speak

The exhibition covers eight sites across Kerala. Each has its own buried story.

Ettukudukka

Ettukudukka sits in Kannur’s midland region. Geoglyphs carved into exposed laterite show herds of cattle moving east with prominent humps. The rock carvings look like finds along the Konkan Coast. They suggest ancient people shared signs through stone over long distances.

Marayoor

Marayoor is in the Western Ghats of Idukki. It holds some of Kerala’s most important rock art.

Pictographs in red ochre and white kaolin fill some shelters. They show animal figures and human forms. Other pictographs show honeycomb patterns and what appears to be a sambar deer with a calf.

The different and overlaid styles suggest use over many periods. Together they build a layered record of early culture.

Anakkara

Anakkara lies in Palakkad and preserves Iron Age monuments built by iron-using communities. Dressed stone blocks stand in circles and umbrella shapes on laterite hillocks. Caves cut into the laterite held big ceramic urns with bone fragments and grave goods, such as pots and iron tools. The contents were packed by hand more than two millennia ago.

Kakkodi

Kakkodi is in Kozhikode, where workers accidentally found a megalithic rock-cut cave in 2014 while clearing shrubs for a house. The cave sits on a hillock called Chirattumala. The Kerala Archaeology Department found burial goods inside, such as a rare iron hanger and semi-precious beads of etched carnelian and agate. AMS dating put the remains at about 2,600 years before present.

Cheemeni

Cheemeni is in Kannur district, where the site has less to show. The Kerala State Department of Archaeology dug the rock-cut caves at Pothamkandam. Local disturbance had already damaged the site. Only broken potteries and a few iron objects were found.

Parambathukavu

Parambathukavu is in Malappuram. A wide range of remains has been found there: microlithic tools, petroglyphs, terracotta figurines and a megalithic rock-cut cave. There are also postholes and a Devi temple inside a sacred grove (kavu). The postholes sit in rows, circles or ovals with broad grooves and may be traces of temporary huts or platforms for funerary practices.

Kaliyathumukku

Kaliyathumukku is in Arikulam village, Kozhikode, where workers found a rock-cut cave with two long rectangular chambers during house construction. The find surprised everyone. The dig produced about thirty-four potteries. No iron tools were found, an odd absence that sets the site apart from similar caves.

Did you know? Unexplored tunnels of Fort Kochi.

In the 16th century, the Portuguese built a network of tunnels. It is a very unusual piece of underground architecture. Wherever the Portuguese built fortresses, they bored tunnels. These let them escape if enemies attacked.

About Mohamed A

Mohamed A comes from Thiruvananthapuram. He has spent more than twenty years as a photographer. He won the Junior Fellowship for Photography from the Ministry of Culture, Government of India (2002-2004).

He photographs nature and the lifestyles of many communities across India. He also records their cultures and traditions.

His work with archives and archaeology has widened his practice. He worked on museum catalogues and handbooks for the Muziris Heritage Project. He made excavation reports for the Kerala State Archaeology Department. He created photobooks of sites such as Edakkal Cave in Wayanad.

In 2018, he made his debut as a cinematographer on the Malayalam film “Udalazham”, directed by Unikrishnan Awala. It showed at national and international film festivals. He has since worked on five more feature films. He keeps exploring the nuances of visual storytelling.

Kerala’s hidden prehistory

Kerala’s rock art and megalithic sites are still unknown to many Keralites. The rock paintings of Marayoor and the petroglyphs of Edakkal and Ettukudukka are not in school textbooks or tourism brochures. Neither are the megalithic burial sites across the Western Ghats. This is unlike the famous Bhimbetka caves in Madhya Pradesh.

“Archaeological Camera” brings these faraway sites into Fort Kochi. Mohamed A’s lens lets us think about what is absent from the picture: the shadows, the tools, the footprints. It also shows what led up to each moment he captured.

Did you know? Jews in Cochin were granted the same royal privileges as Hindu nobility.

They could use silk umbrellas, ride elephants, travel in palanquins, wear gold-studded wooden slippers and carry ceremonial lamps. The rights were engraved on copper plates around 1000 CE.