On Elephanta Island, archaeologists race to unearth ancient waterworks before the onset of the rains. “The water must be sweet, right?” a man in a pink jersey calls out from the stone steps. “It is,” replies the young man in a Dragon Ball Z T-shirt below, without looking up from his pickaxe.On a rocky island surrounded by saltwater, Marathi dialects echo inside a five-metre-deep trench. Welcome to ELP-2, one of six excavation “pockets” at Morabandar on Elephanta Island, globally known only for its cave sculptures.Short for Elephanta 2, the site contains an uneven T-shaped structure whose heart is a massive pit that has recently emerged as one of the Archaeological Survey of India’s most significant finds: a 1,500-year-old stepped reservoir.The discovery suggests that Elephanta was not just a sacred cave complex but a critical node in a thriving trade network linking Rome, West Asia and the Indian subcontinent between the 4th and 5th centuries CE, say experts.Known to local fishermen as Gharapuri, Elephanta is made up of two hills and a narrow valley, its rocky terrain sending most rainwater straight into the sea. The stepped tank, archaeologists believe, was how its ancient inhabitants solved that problem.Since Nov last year, a loose, almost superhero-like ensemble of researchers—primarily from Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute in Pune and KJ Somaiya College in Mumbai—has been camping in island guest houses, commuting daily to the pits to assist the ASI’s Mumbai Circle in uncovering Morabandar’s buried past.The team—hailing from Amravati, Pune, Kolkata, Rajasthan, Mumbai and Navi Mumbai—brings together expertise in numismatics, ceramics, art history and structural archaeology. Alongside labourers from Palghar, they comb, sieve and sort the island’s reddish-brown soil for traces of its infrastructural ingenuity.Chaitanya Dubey, a young freelance archaeologist from Amravati, moves through the terrain with ease, rattling off coordinates and crossing ledges without looking down. He points to grooves etched into the ground by monsoon runoff. “Rain gullies,” he says. “Over centuries, they sliced through buried structures and objects, exposing edges. That’s how we located various structures on the site.”At ELP-1, two workers crouch with brushes and scrapers inside a trench. They are cleaning two massive jars, one wide as the other is 4-feet tall. “We almost dismissed the first as just a shard initially,” Dubey says. “Then we kept digging.”What were they used for? Rice, wine, dye—possibilities abound. “Our best guess is water storage,” he says. The excavation is steadily dismantling the idea of Elephanta as purely a sacred site. ‘Periplus of the Erythraean Sea’, a 1st-century CE merchant’s guide, mentions Sopara (modern Nalasopara) as a major trading hub but not Gharapuri. “Perhaps because it wasn’t an open market,” says Abhijit Ambekar, superintending archaeologist at the ASI. “It may have been more specialised—an anchorage, a trans-shipment point. . .”When Sopara silted up between the 4th and 5th centuries CE, Gharapuri may have stepped in as a transit point. Evidence from ELP-5—marine fish bones and sand deposits—suggests the shoreline once extended further inland.Back at ELP-2, a labourer emerges from the reservoir—14.7 metres long and 10.8 metres wide, with 20 steps descending into bedrock. “On an island with post-monsoon water scarcity, such structures are essential,” says Ambekar. Unlike rock-cut cisterns found at cave-monastic sites, this was built from scratch—possibly predating the stepwell tradition of the 7th century CE. “It may have shaped that tradition, not inherited it,” he adds. “And the stone and brick used here aren’t local—they were ferried in. Imagine that scale of investment.”The project has cost around Rs 50 lakh so far—much of it spent on excavation. One worker from Rajasthan has been dedicated solely to searching for grains. “He’s found charred rice. That’s what people here ate.”Higher up, inside a makeshift lab near the caves, artefacts are catalogued in metal trunks. Art historian Ketki Mahajan holds up a tiny terracotta elephant. “A miniature of the original statue that gave the island its name,” she says.Nearby, Siddhi Mahale examines torpedo jars—one with a narrow base that seems impossible to balance, another sturdier. “Amphora have handles near the neck. Torpedoes are missile-shaped,” she explains. “In some pockets, we’ve found more foreign shards than indigenous ones. That’s rare.”Before the monsoon arrives, the storage jars will be relocated, restored by the ASI’s Science Branch, and eventually displayed at the entrance to the Elephanta Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.By then, Dubey will have moved on—to another site, another contract. His career, like the excavation, is seasonal and uncertain. “I don’t have a permanent job yet,” he smiles.
