The Prof who brings our past to present day audiences
For Prof. Raj Somadeva, his passion for archaeology began when, ten years old, he came across a newspaper article about Prof. Senarat Paranavitana discovering an ancient lithic inscription, and was claimed by the mysteries of the past.
It was similar to the grand old man of Lankan archaeology, Paranavitana himself being sparked by the copy of Epigraphia Zeylanica that he received at a school prize-giving.
Today Prof. Somadeva is an exciting presence on YouTube, dealing with such subjects as the mystery of the Naga tribe, the origins of Vihara Maha Devi and visiting forgotten shrines like Budupatungala in Paanama.
Far from guarding his discipline in the austere confines of academe, he is all for popularizing history for the public who ‘pay their tax money to do research’, and deserve and expect to ‘hear stories about their ancestors’. Today his prolific YouTube videos on various channels cater to those avid lovers of our island’s past and its unexplored nooks and crannies.
For Prof. Somadeva archaeology is ‘like a walk through a time tunnel’. Curiosity is inherent when you march along an unknown territory and imagination he says is ‘a core element’.
He is not averse to commenting on the current controversy regarding our archaeological heritage (centring on Kurundi Vihara) saying: “Controversies are common everywhere in social sciences and humanities. Because, those disciplines directly address to the ideas and concepts, that are interwoven with the beliefs of the people. Beliefs are encompassed by either ethnic ideologies or if not by religious dogmas. Therefore anyone can pull an archaeological explanation into a controversy. Most of the recent problems associated with archaeological sites in Sri Lanka can be considered dilemmas that were consciously created by third-party interventions.”
Delgahawaththage Raj Kumar Somadeva was born in Wellawaya, and grew up in many different parts of the country as the son of a government servant. He was the eldest of six children and his last schools were Holy Cross College, Kalutara and Kalutara Vidyalaya.
He obtained both his first degree and his Master of Philosophy from the Kelaniya University, going on to Uppsala University, Sweden for his doctoral studies. Today he is a senior professor at the Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology, University of Kelaniya.
It was epigraphy and deciphering it that first attracted him but later cultural evolution and the human story of the Primitive Man gripped him.
So most of his research was done in places like the Ranchamadama cemetery at Uda Walawe, used as far back as 1350 BCE.
He spent six years from 1999 to 2005 in the south and south-eastern part of Sri Lanka to understand the historical development of urbanism in that area, which has been described in the national historical chronicles and the lithic inscriptions.
During that period he undertook several macro-scale reconnaissance surveys and nine archaeological excavations in the Lower Kirindi Oya basin. The results of the fieldwork were presented to his doctoral degree at Uppsala University as his thesis, The Origins of Urbanism in Southern Sri Lanka.
“I always try to avoid excavations because they completely obliterate the cultural deposits that belong to the public. An excavation must be done in a limited manner, adequate only to obtain information to solve a particular problem. So my choice of excavations is decided according to the nature of the problem that has to be solved.”
After completing his PhD, he investigated the problems related to the pre and proto-historic transition in Sri Lanka. As a result of his fieldwork, he identified a new transitional phase in the later prehistory occupied by the advanced hunter-gatherers of the Holocene. He was able to explain how the late Holocene hunter-gatherers were resilient to climate change and how they adapted to floral resource exploitation for their survival.
Today, he strives to understand the cognitive advances of the advanced hunter-gatherers of the late Holocene in the country.
As he look back on well-nigh 35 years of probing into our prehistory especially ancient urbanisation, he is equally passionate about bringing that history to a wider audience.
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