Prehistoric Life in the Jaffna Peninsula - A Preliminary Investigations for the study of Stone Age culture base on Archaeological Evidences

The investigation undertaken here on prehistoric life in the Jaffna Peninsula is a preliminary study of the stone age culture based on archaeological evidences. Having considered the remarkable collection of stone implements from the Jaffna Peninsula, it is expected to stratify the cultural successions before the historical records came to use in the Peninsula. Most of the excavation missions so far have been deployed in this region which focused light on the Megalithic cultural layers and material culture of the period. But for the first time an excavation mission was targeted by the Department of Archaeology of Sri Lanka with finding of prehistoric layer deposits and prehistoric remains at Kantarodai and Mayakkai in 2011 and 2020 respectively in the Peninsula. The concept of prehistoric settlements in the Jaffna Peninsula had been developed from the research findings of this author who has been working since more than 30 years in collecting of material like stone tools in many variety which had been used by the mankind lived in this Peninsula before the written records come to the usage. This investigation has been categorized into the three main divisions based on the material we received in relation to the prehistoric life adopted in this land. Having conducted explorations, surface collections and unexpected discoveries of artifacts from the archaeological sites like Mayakkai Cave site in Point Pedro District and the Lower Valley of Thondamanaru salt water basin site have yielded much stone implements from time to time. The most important discovery was held that the 31st Layer of the 2nd Trench Pit at Kantarodai (excavation held in 2011) which exposes the prehistoric sediments. Thus, the morphology of the stone tools found so far from the Peninsula stimulate us to develop a room for research space for prehistoric life existed in this peninsular region. Though the time span of the prehistoric culture is much wider, our material collections are very narrow for this particular period of research as the title indicates the aim and scope of the investigation is a preliminary studies. Our proposed hypotheses have enhanced to highlight the prehistoric cultural strata with the life style of the people who lived before the historic ages. Therefore, this is not an entity of un-witnessed mission or concepts but the collection of accumulated man made implements from the surface basins of Thondamanaru and Valukiyaru have testified our hypotheses that ‘The prehistoric settlement was formed from the sand dune area which was located in Vadamaradchi- East, as the northern edge of the expansion of Iranaimadu Culture ends. B.) Deviation of Neolithic Life and Microlithic culture intermingled in the Lower part of Thondamanaru Salt basin and C.) Prehistoric Cultural epicenter was formed at Mayakkai in Vadamaradchi as socio- economic influences received from Iranaimadu Basin at the time. However, to make very clear cut phenomena of the prehistoric cultural phases from Palaeolithic, Microlithic and Neolithic cultural strata in the Jaffna Peninsula we need to have stratigraphic evidences which will be available when excavations taking place. However, in this introductory research a preliminary examination has been done in order to verifying the collected stone tools of the cultures.