Kuthannoor (gram panchayat)

Kuthannoor (or Kuthanur, Kuthannur, Kuthanoor) is a gram panchayat in the Palakkad district, state of Kerala, India. It is a local government organisation that serves the villages of Kuthannur-I and Kuthannur-II.[1] It is a part of the Tharoor assembly constituency.[2]

One of the six "sangams" or associations of Tholpavakoothu, a form of puppetry, originated in Kuthanur.[3] Krishnan Kutty Pulavar Memorial Tolpavakoothu & Puppet Centre perform puppetry performances at Nadumannath Bhagawathi and Kuthannur Kavu temples in Kuthanur.[4]

Megalithic relics have been discovered in ten acres of reserved forest at Muppuzha, Kuthanoor. These comprise 100 port-hole cists that show strong similarities with dolmens from different parts of Europe, such as the Iberian Peninsula, France, Caucasus mountains, Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Israel.[5] The Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology describes a port-hole cist thus: "a box-like burial chamber, largely underground and built of gneissic orthostats floorstone and capstone but arranged inside a rectangular pit scooped out of the native laterite. The e. orthostat has a port-hole which is blocked by a small slab on the outside. The entire structure is surrounded by a stone circle. The cist sometimes has a bench inside ..."[6]