Curious visitors at the excavation site at Banga near Jatni on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Feb. 13: Anthropologists and archaeologists worked all through last night to take out the 4000-year-old human skeleton from a site on the outskirts of the city and transported it the department of anthropology at Utkal University this morning.

Droves of visitors thronged the site at Banga village near Jatni all day yesterday to take a look at the skeleton from the Chalcolithic era (Copper Age). The skeleton, taken out in pieces, was packed inside a 7-feet coffin for its transportation from the excavated site to Utkal University.

“Yesterday alone, more than 6,000 people visited the site. As the day was Kumbh Sankranti, there was a large congregation near the Somnathdeb temple. As news of the Chalcolithic skeleton spread to nearby areas, visitors came in droves to take a look at it. It hampered work to lift the skeleton from the site. So, we decided to work at night. We also did not want to expose the skeleton to too much daylight, as this might have damaged it further,” said Kishor Kumar Basa, professor of anthropology, Utkal University. The 5-feet 7-inches skeleton was discovered from a mound nearly 400 metres to the south of the famous Somnathdeb temple near the Pipili-Jatni road. The site is nearly 15km from Sundarpada in Bhubaneswar.

Basa and R.K. Mohanty, professor in proto and ancient Indian history, department of archaeology, Deccan College, Pune, were conducting the excavation work funded by the Centre for Heritage Studies, Bhubaneswar.

Apart from the skeleton, several floors of the settlement, potsherds and polished stone tools were found at the Banga site. Archaeologists think the findings at Banga will throw more light on the formative phase of the farming community in coastal Odisha.