Page 13 - Citadel Book P I

component: the trees are about 20m tall with about 50 species to a locality (for details
Deraniyagala 1992: appendix I 481-510).

The terrain is flat or gently undulating at 60-120m above mean sea level, with occasional
rocky outcrops rising about 300m abruptly out of the plain. The rocks fall within the Highland
Series (Precambrian 3000-2000 million years old) of metamorphic crystallines comprising
gneisses, schists and charnockites (Cooray 1984:80-99).

The dominant soil is a Reddish Brown Earth (Panabokke 1967:68-9), in association with
Yellowish Brown Earths and Low-Humic Gley soils in the middle and lower aspects of the
drainage topography respectively. The Reddish Brown Earths are chemically fertile and a
wide range of cereals, pulses, subsidiary food crops and pastures can be grown upon them
under rain-fed or irrigated conditions (ibid.:84-5). The lower drainage associates are among the
most productive rice-growing soil in Sri Lanka, provided the water supply is ensured by
irrigation.

The Citadel at Anuradhapura is situated within a kilometre of the Malvatu Oya river.
The basal gravel of the stratigraphic sequence at the Citadel occurs at about 8m above the
present river bed.

Gedige 1969 (AG-69)
In 1968, the Excavations Branch of the Archaeological Department was inaugurated, with the
present writer as its head. The brief of this unit was to conduct or oversee all research
excavations in the country. The excavation at the location referred to as Gedige (AG) in the
Citadel, which had previously been assayed by Deraniyagala and Sestieri down to a depth of
ca. 4m, was the first project to have been undertaken by the Excavations Branch. It was
effected under the project direction of K. de B. Codrington of the Institute of Archaeology,
London University, with the present writer as field and post-excavation director. Sestieri’s pit
no. 2, which in 1959 measured 7 x 7 m in area and ca. 4m in depth, was stripped of its
vegetation and earth fill and the sides straightened by lateral cutting. Four sondages (A1, A2,
B1, B2) were sent down into the base of Sestieri’s pit. A lateral extension (C1, C2) was also
made in order to ascertain the archaeological sequence in the upper levels which had already
been excavated in areas A and B by P.E.P. Deraniyagala and Sestieri (Deraniyagala 1972:52-
5).

The objective of the excavation (AG-69) was to obtain a general outline of the
stratigraphic and cultural sequences, together with as large a sample of cultural material as
possible. Hence it was decided to minimise eccentricity of stratigraphy and artefact sample
while optimising on cost- and time-effectiveness by excavating in macro-stratigraphic units.
The sampling was exhaustive for non-ceramic artefacts. As for pottery, all rim-sherds and
other analytically useful specimens were retained.

Both the excavation and the post-excavation analyses and interpretations proved to be a
major upgrading of Sri Lankan archaeology. For the first time, the former was based on

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