IIT-GN to set up R&D centre on archaeology

The Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar (IIT-GN), will establish a centre for research and development (R&D) on archaeology with a view to facilitate protection of the national heritage.

IIT-GN will join hands with institutes like Pune's Deccan College, Chennai-based Sharma Centre for Heritage Education and M S University among others to develop synergy on R&D, and to offer a national facility eventually for conducting cutting edge research in the arena.IIT-GN will collaborate with these institutes in the next few months, for which preliminary work has already begun.

"A lot of new science and technology has come, which has changed the way archaeology is being practised. We think we can offer a continuum approach right from basic archaeology all the way to science and technology," said IIT-GN director Prof Sudhir Jain.

In a bid to revive archaeological practices by providing a technological interface, IIT-GN has proposed to start offering few post-doctoral fellowships to archaeologists and commence a minor programme on archaeology from the next academic session.

"We are trying to offer post-doctoral fellowship to archaeologists, as archaeology today requires a lot of modern tools and science," said Prof Jaison A Manjaly, adding, "We plan to start a minor programme in archaeology, which consists of six courses to be completed within three years. They can be taken up by B Tech students."

The archaeology centre is proposed to be equipped with some of the latest research instruments on carbon dating and archaeometery (for measuring all type of artifacts) among others, which will be open for use to archaeologists from across the country.

To begin with, IIT-GN has planned to take up collaborative research projects on the Harappan sites in Gujarat, where its students and faculty shall work with experts.

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