Excavations at Gotihawa And a Territorial Survey in Kapilavastu District of Nepal- A Preliminary Report

Introduction The excavations at Gothawa started in December 1994 and were carried us every year up to now except for the 1995-96 season. During the fins excavation campaign, the documentation necessary for the planned district survey (maps and aerial photos) was collected and work commenced-first in Italy and then in the field. The halian sram has been assisted over the years by officers of the Department of Archaeology of HMG and of the Lumbini Development Trust. The friendly, steady support of these institutions has assured the regular execution of the work.

Fands for sur search work were granted by the Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, Rome (signatory to the agreement with the Department of Archaeology of HMG of Nepal that made the project pobler Tutin Universitario Orientale. Naples: Consiglin Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome: Ministero degli Affan E Re We are grateful to the Lumbini Internal Research Institute for the grants provided to us for the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 campaign.

A few preliminary notes on the ongoing excavation and moral survey have already been or are being published (Verands 1998, Jacoli and Verardi in press Veran and Coccia in press a, b) They reflect our progressive understanding of the sate and the surrounding territory as well as our occasional hesitations. These are now being slowly overcome.

especially as regards the difficult problem of the site chimnology. The present report in the mod comprehensive among those writes by we until now and deals with the fieldwerk carried out from the beginning up to the 1995-99 campaign.

This report could be written thanks to the strict and friendly co-operation of all the members of the team and of our colleagues in Italy who provided us with the results of laboratory analyses and an interpertation of them Stefano Coccia has been especially concerned with the stratigraphy of the site, and Giulia Di Anastasio with a pedological examination of the archaeological deposit: Enrica Cerchi has made a preliminary classification of the ceramics, whale Liliana Camanda has dealt with the other finds the description of the stipa is due to Anna Grafia Fabiani Kosh Prasad Acharya and Basanta Bidari have made many valuable observations on the excavation and the materials found. The C14 analyses were carried out by the Beta Analytic Laboratory, Miami, and these were subsequently re-examined and commented upon by Luca Bondioli; Lorenzo Costantini has been responsible for the palace-botanical analyses and we the related portion of the text, while Antonio Rossi has been analysing the stone samples. Maria Jacoli is in charge of the territorial survey, and we owe to her the heuristic predictive model that has been applied, as well as the list of the new archaeological sites found in the district The results of the last campaign were presented at the Conference of South Asian Archaeology held in Leiden in July 1999 Verardi and Coccia in press).

**Contents and Sample Pages**