Dig, discover, experience a 2,500-yr-old civilisation in a Gujarat museum

The depository conjoins an existent excavated site, wherever 1 tin spot the remains of a 2,500-year-old past town. To support visitors engaged from museum’s ticketing and waiting lounge itself, a sensor-based level representation keeps projecting a self-guided virtual circuit of this Mehsana territory town, besides the birthplace of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Of the museum’s 13,500 sq m, an country of 3,400 sq m comprises existent excavation sites: visitors tin spot the remains of an existent fort partition and the existent archaeological site, located adjacent door. In the museum, visitors tin locomotion connected a solid level installed implicit a replica of the tract adjacent door. The replica includes a conception of the thoroughfare showing however the municipality and its activities evolved. The depository besides contains a recreated brahman sheri (a constrictive lane) astatine Ghaskol, a tiny Buddhist monastery that was excavated recently. To recreate the sheri, 2 layers of terracotta bricks were stacked successful a mode arsenic they were recovered during the excavation.

For the tour’s experiential part, a medium-sized excavation pit has been created wrong the museum. Here, visitors are encouraged to usage the disposable archaeological tools “to excavate existent objects”, too trying their hands connected the mortar and pestle, and the miniature chromatic grinder.

The depository besides has activities for children. At a partition section, they tin make paintings utilizing watercolours and capable enactment drawings; successful the ammunition assemblage section, they tin lick a jigsaw puzzle; they tin besides plan their ain bangles connected a integer surface and consciousness them “digitally” connected their hand; and they tin besides usage ample replicas of beads made of stone, solid and terracotta to marque their ain necklaces, among different activities.

“Integrated with an experiential walkway implicit the successful situ excavation site, this is the first-of-its-kind depository successful India. The thought down it was to marque idiosyncratic visiting Vadnagar recognize the past and value of this town, which is implicit 2,500 years old,” Pankaj Sharma, director, Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, Gujarat, tells The Indian Express.

To recreate the past of Vadnagar, the depository has 500 spots with audio usher sensors, 8 main films, 30 sub films and assorted audio-visual galleries.

Sharma adds, “Using show and technology, the depository attempts to supply an exploration of the city’s improvement done interpretations of events implicit time.”

While replicas assistance showcase the city’s evolution, implicit 6,000 existent artifacts person besides been displayed successful the museum’s galleries.

“The practice of taste periods (at the museum) involves illustrating assorted aspects, specified arsenic municipality lifestyles, beliefs, governmental situations, societal operation and noteworthy events, arsenic gleaned from archaeological and humanities discoveries. Excavated artefacts, epigraphic evidence, existing monuments and built environments service arsenic communicative elements too,” says Grace Ann Varkey, superintending archaeologist, Gandhinagar, and the museum’s curator incharge.

The depository has 7 galleries and experiences based connected thematic frameworks: Reception and Orientation Gallery, Introduction Gallery, City Gallery, Belief Gallery, Lifestyle and Economic Gallery, Future Gallery and Introduction to Excavation Gallery.

The Introduction to Excavation Gallery establishes the discourse of the excavation tract by utilizing a 3D standard exemplary of the excavation and installations connected cardinal findings. The assemblage besides introduces visitors to archaeological processes, tools and techniques.