Department of Archaeology

The Kohla Project

Christopher Evans, Judith Pettigrew and Yarjung Tamu

The project arose, in effect, as a commission from the Gurung/Tamu-mai community of Pokhara in West-Central Nepal, with the aim of working with them in order to `find their past' in the highlands of Annapurna Ranges of Himalayas (c. 2,500–3,500m a.s.l.). This community archaeology project was also multi-disciplinary, with Dr Judith Pettigrew, a social anthropologist, and Yarjung Kromchain Tamu, a prominent shaman, as its co-Directors. Yarjung's involvement was particularly relevant as, in their rituals, local shaman chant long narratives (the pye) that outline the migration of the Tamu-mai into the region from an unspecified northern source, thought probably to either be in northern Tibet, China or, even, Mongolia. Featuring in these is the settlement of Kohla Sombre—`Kohla, the Three villages'—held to be last place where they lived en masse as a people.

During the 1990s, two project expeditions were undertaken in the region. Not only did we survey a series of settlement sites outlined in the pye, but also two 15/16th century forts. Including some 60 major building ruins (some standing as high as 4.00 m) and situated at 3,200m a.s.l., of the highland village-settlement sites Kohla is by far and away the most spectacular, and there can be little doubt of its attribution given its unique, tripartite layout.

As it happened, due to the Maoist insurgency that has come to plague Nepal, our first season of excavation at Kohla, in 2000, proved to be the last for the foreseeable future. Producing great quantities of pottery and, also, evidence of both long-distance trade and local industry, we were able to firmly radiocarbon date its occupation to the 9th–12th centuries AD. With fieldwork no longer viable in the countryside, in an effort to round-off the project, in 2002 a mass meeting of more than a hundred shamans was hosted, when their oral historical narratives were recorded.

The volume, fully outlining the project's findings and context, has now been completed and will appear in late 2006/2007.

Project publications

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