 Sir <unk> , the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India , in the 1940s saw a few <unk> of Arikamedu site displayed in the Madras Museum , which he identified as <unk> ware , an expensive ceramic made until 50 CE in <unk> , Italy . Thereafter , when he visited the Pondicherry Museum and saw more of the findings from the Arikamedu site , he was impressed and thought that he had found the links between the Classical Mediterranean and Ancient India . Soon thereafter in 1945 , the penultimate year of World War II , he mounted excavations in a scientific manner . He was looking for an archaeological site in India that could establish its cultural link , a <unk> of the Indian antiquities to the Greco @-@ Roman period , and this quest led him to the Arikamedu site . These excavations also involved Indian archaeologists , who were trained on the site . 
