The Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, will establish a centre for research and development (R&D) in archaeology with a view to facilitating protection of the national heritage.

IIT-GN would join hands with other institutes such as Pune’s Deccan College, the Chennai-based Sharma Centre for Heritage Education and MS University, amongst others, to develop synergies on R&D, and to eventually offer a national facility for conducting cutting edge research in the area.

“A lot of new science and technology has been developed, which has changed the way archaeology is being practised. We think we can offer a continuum approach right from basic archaeology all the way to science and technology,” IIT-GN Director Prof Sudhir Jain told PTI.

“A small initiative has been taken to establish an R&D centre in archaeology here in this direction. We will be working in coordination with other varsities and institutes,” he said, adding that it is important to protect our past.

IIT-GN will collaborate with these institutes in the next few months, for which preliminary work has already begun.

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Mysore, has a branch that works on deciphering text or languages discovered from ancient sites called Epigraphy.

In a bid to revive archaeological practices by providing a technological interface, IIT-GN has proposed to start offering few post-doctoral fellowships to archaeologists and commence a minor programme on archaeology from the next academic session.

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