New Delhi, Oct 10: They were walls that existed hundreds of years ago - of buildings to house royalty and even deities. Today they are reduced to "ghost walls". In Lathiya, Uttar Pradesh, the existence of a bustling temple complex has been traced by archaeologists just by unearthing these invisible walls.
It was a tall stone pillar perched atop a huge mound that first attracted the attention of British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham to the site in Lathiya, a small village in Ghazipur district, around 150 years ago.
Only in 2009-10 did a team of the Archaeological Survey of India land at the site, and painstakingly unearthed the evidence of an early Gupta period - about 320-550 AD - temple complex.
The buildings no longer exist. The bricks and stones that made up the walls were over the years taken away by nearby villagers for their own house construction and even by the British for use in a railway line.
So how did archaeologists trace the ghost walls?
The archaeologists' team, headed by B.R. Mani, the then joint director general of ASI, traced the different colours of the soil - over the foundations of the now non-existent buildings and that around it - to reveal the temple complex. The soil covering the foundations had a distinctly different colour compared to that around it.
"Many of the bricks of the ancient temples had also been taken away for laying the East India Railway line in 1862. The line passes about a km away," Mani, the additional director general of ASI, told IANS.
"An aerial view of the different colours of the soil - on the foundation and that lying around it - gives a complete picture of the plan of the structure that once existed," S.K. Mittra, director archaeology, ASI, told IANS.
Ghost walls is an archaeological term.
