Artist Ramananda Bandopadhyay at a gallery of the new museum. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

The new, six-gallery museum behind Behala tram depot, to be unveiled by Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi on Thursday, does the commendable job of presenting in an attractive and easily-accessible manner the priceless collection locked in the old State Archaeological Museum building alongside.

Gautam Sengupta, director, Centre for Archaeological Studies, describes the museum as ?a showcase of Bengal from 2000 BC to 2000 AD.? It provides portals into some of the most interesting periods of social and cultural development. There are photographs, touch-screen kiosks and informative panels to guide the uninitiated through the introductory gallery, excavation gallery, sculpture gallery, metal sculptures of Bengal gallery, a painting gallery (that traces the changing identity of the Bengal artist from the Mughal miniaturist to patua and Jamini Roy) and the Chandraketugarh gallery.

Standing in one of the galleries of the three-storeyed archaeological museum awaiting inauguration on Diamond Harbour Road, keeper P.K. Mitra rued that despite legal and administrative measures, very little could be done to control the large-scale theft of ancient treasures from various parts of the country.

Of the artefacts on display, most were collected during police raids and departmental investigations. The number of acquisitions of paintings and sculptures, and finds from recent excavations in Jagajivanpur, Dhosa and Tilpi is smaller.

All the artefacts on display at the Chandraketugarh gallery were seized from thieves. But these items of terracotta, iron and bone from prehistoric Bengal have been disappearing from the site ever since the first excavations carried out by the Calcutta University in 1955-56.

?Private collectors are regularly visiting the seven villages across which this site stretches, buying up the ancient finds and smuggling them abroad. Often, they enter into contracts with poor farmers to resuscitate old or dry ponds on the condition that whatever artefact is found becomes theirs. Chandraketugarh has proved to be one of the richest sites, there was a time when one could buy antiquities at Rs 2 per basket load. Now, they don?t sell these so cheap. We can?t really control it,? said Mitra.

The terracotta narrative plaques showing harvesting festivals, pottery with appliqu? relief, animals and toys, shiny black and rouletted ware, tiny iron implements like arrowheads, sickle even a fragment of a metal mirror from Chandraketugarh will enthral viewers with their technical and artistic brilliance. ?But they also raise questions. For instance, how were these inscribed seals used? Who are these unidentified deities called ganas belonging to a time when iconography had not begun? Why are there so many female figures exuding authority? Was this then a matriarchal society?? wonders Mitra. In the same gallery are items from Tamluk, Mangalkot, Farakka, Panna and other places from 2000 BC to 2000 AD.