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Sri Lanka’s Ibbankatuwa shows what India gets wrong about archaeology

What struck me the most at Ibbankatuwa was not the scale of its infrastructure, but the restraint with which the site has been presented.

Sri Lanka welcomed about 2.3 million travellers in 2025. Indians accounted for around 23 per cent of the arrivals. While the coast remains Sri Lanka’s biggest tourist attraction, nearly one-third of Indian travellers also visit the ‘Cultural Triangle’, home to UNESCO World Heritage Sites including Anuradhapura, Dambulla, Sigiriya and Polonnaruwa. Yet, tucked away just beyond this celebrated circuit is a site that rarely finds mention in guidebooks.

On a summer morning, while driving to Dambulla, a modest roadside signboard caught my eye. It was an unexpected detour that led to one of the island’s most significant protohistoric sites. Around three kilometres from Dambulla Cave Temples lies Ibbankatuwa, one of Sri Lanka’s largest and best-preserved protohistoric Megalithic burial sites. As an archaeologist, finding Ibbankatuwa in the middle of a cultural trail was exciting. The state of preservation and display impressed me, but it also underscored how little visibility Megalithic sites receive in the subcontinent, despite their remarkable archaeological significance.

Inevitably, I circled back to the most pressing question—do we need mega monument-like infrastructure to convert archaeological sites into tourist spots? Or can we take a much more simplistic path of preservation just as in the case of Ibbankatuwa.

Also read: Rajka Pottery reveals India’s ceramic heritage. It’s ethnoarchaeology in action

Ibbankatuwa Burial Complex

Sri Lanka’s archaeological antiquity goes back to the palaeolithic period (25,000 BP). It’s followed by the Mesolithic period characterised by hunting, gathering and fishing as main source of economy. Then comes the proto-historic period (c.1000-300 BCE), which marks the emergence of iron technology, black and red ware and megalithic burial architecture. This period was accompanied by agriculture, pastoralism and the rise........

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