Tremors	March 29, 2001
by Elizabeth J. Himelfarb

A watchman stands vigil at a destroyed temple to the Hindu god Shiva in Bhuj, India. (AP/Wide World Photos) [LARGER IMAGE]

The earthquake that devastated India's Gujarat state in January pummeled the historic city of Bhuj, but, despite media reports to the contrary, spared Dholavira, a center of ancient Indus Valley civilization. In Bhuj, founded in the mid-sixteenth century, countless mosques, palaces, and temples, as well as a major museum, have been reduced to rubble. The city's Kutch Museum contained 5,000-year-old Harappan seals whose fate is not known. Damage beyond Bhuj was not as catastrophic; in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's largest city, minarets cracked but did not topple.

Gregory Possehl of the University of Pennsylvania was excavating the Bronze Age site of Gilund in southern Rajasthan, 300 miles east of the epicenter, when the quake hit. "It was India Republic Day, and we'd given our laborers paid leave," Possehl said. "I felt a gentle rumbling, and someone in the tent said, 'Is that an earthquake?' I knew we were either on the edge of something big or in the middle of something small."

"Bhuj is a bizarre, rustic, and wonderfully remote place time largely passed by," Possehl said. "Herds of cattle and camels are still the means of subsistence. I am told at least 70 percent of the city is leveled."

© 2001 by the Archaeological Institute of America archive.archaeology.org/online/news/gujarat.html

Share