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Shoreline changes along the Poompuhar Tranquebar region

DRS at CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography

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Title Shoreline changes along the Poompuhar Tranquebar region
 
Creator Sundaresh
Jayakumar, S.
SanilKumar, V.
 
Description Poompuhar, a flourishing port in the beginning of the Christian era played a major role in maritime activities and cultural expansion in the history of India. The marine archaeological explorations around Poompuhar brought to light the remains of terracotta ring wells, brick structures, storage jars in the inter tidal zone and brick structures, stone structures, pottery from offshore explorations strongly support the habitation sites. There are several references suggesting the shift of shoreline at Poompuhar and Tranquebar, which may be one of the reasons of its submergence. The main process directly responsible for shoreline change is influenced by the waves. The studies on waves were used to estimate the long shore sediment transport, which indicates the predominant direction of transport is northerly from March to October and southerly from November to February. Cyclones during north-east monsoon would considerably increase the volume of sediment transport towards south with a short spell. It is noticed that for the occurrence of every cyclone there was a permanent loss of beach due to erosion. The global sea level is estimated to be 1 mm per year and may have resulted in 2 m net sea level rise in the last 2000 years. Since the near shore bathymetry gradient is gentle 1 m sea level rise may cover up to several hundred meters of coastline. The recent inundation during tsunami was up to 500m from the shore. The paper deals with the archaeological findings around Poompuhar and the impact of coastal processes on the shoreline change in the area, which was responsible for the submergence of ancient port town and other monuments in the region.
 
Date 2008-02-12T04:27:32Z
2008-02-12T04:27:32Z
2006
 
Type Conference Article
 
Identifier Glimpses of marine archaeology in India. Proceedings of the Seventh Conference on Marine Archaeology of Indian Ocean Countries, 6-7 October 2005, eds. Gaur, A.S.; Vora, K.H. 100-106p.
http://drs.nio.org/drs/handle/2264/807
 
Language en
 
Rights Copyright [2006]. It is tried to respect the rights of the copyright holders to the best of the knowledge. If it is brought to our notice by copyright holder that the rights are voilated then the item would be withdrawn.
 
Publisher Society for Marine Archaeology, NIO