Le cosiddette ‘croci di San Tommaso’. Una nota archeologica

The question of Christian presence in mainland South Asia, although historically certain, is not archaeologically attested for the period before the Portuguese contact phase. Elsewhere the archaeological evidence is clear: in the Iranian and Central Asian area, in the Karakoram‑Himalaya, but also along the Indian Ocean routes. The so‑called ‘St. Thomas crosses’, a traditional key point for the issue, can hardly be considered as supporting evidence for an early presence of Christian communities at least in South India. Research on these phases will have to move in other directions in the future, both by exploring the rich regional epigraphic corpus and by planning archaeological fieldwork.