The Ibbankatuwa Megalithic burial ground has now become a popular tourist destination.
This historical site is at Ibbankatuwa in the Galewela Divisional Secretariat division on the Kurunegala - Dambulla main road, a few kilometres away from the Sigiriya and Dambulla tourist zones.
The 6th century B.C cemetery shows that even in the ancient times the dead were respected. The structures here are similar to the ones we see in today’s cemeteries. The tombs consist of four flat rock slabs that form a box with a capstone slab on the top. Some of the tombs contain skeletons while others have cremated remains.
The Ibbankatuwa site covers an area of about one square kilometre and has 42 clusters of tombs with an average of about ten tombs per cluster.
The first excavation on the site had been carried out by Raja De Silva, a former Commissioner of Archaeology in 1970. Several observations have been carried out from 1980 to 1988 by the Central Cultural Fund with the assistance of the Post Graduate Institute of Archaeology, Kava Institute of Germany and several other local and foreign organisations. Artefacts including tools, a variety of ancient clay pots, beads and necklaces have been found through the excavations.
The Central Cultural Fund has drawn up a plan to convert the site into a well equipped tourist zone.
