Digs have found Amphorae, Arretine ware, Roman lamps, glassware, glass and stone beads, and gems at the site.

Arikamedu is a coastal fishing village, under the Ariankuppam Panchayat, on the southeastern coast of India, 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) from Pondicherry, on the Pondicherry-Cuddalore road; it was originally a French colonial town.

In 1765, when he visited the ruins at the site, he found the people of the village collecting large ancient bricks exposed at the river bank.

[7] In 1937, Jouveau Dubreuil, an Indologist, also from France, purchased gem stone antiquities from local children, and also gathered some exposed on the site's surface.

Father Fancheux and Raymand Surleau, who were not qualified archaeologists, carried out the excavations at Arikamedu and sent a few antiquities to Indian museums, and also to the École française d'Extrême-Orient in Hanoi.

Wheeler, the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, in the 1940s saw a few potsherds of Arikamedu site displayed in the Madras Museum, which he identified as "terra sigillata", or Arretine ware, an expensive ceramic made until 50 CE in Arezzo, Italy.

[9] 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.

He noted that, for the local fishermen of the village, the antiquities were strange—as they consisted of lamps, glass items, gemstones, cutlery and crockery, wine containers, etc.

He also observed that traders traveled from west coast and from Ceylon, Kolchoi (Colchi) and the Ganges area to trade goods such as gems, pearls and spices, and silk.

[12][5][11] Wheeler also found the Chinese celadon, identified to belong to the Song-Yuan dynasty, and Chola coins from about the eleventh century, but these were rejected as despoiling items or remnants left by brick-robbers.

At the same time she started researching on the beads, organized a proper sequential display of the artifacts of the site at the Pondicherry Museum, and brought out an information brochure.

[7] Based on the antiquities and structural features from the excavations, Begley and Raman established a revised sequence of six major periods of occupation of the site.

The ceramic find of crockery and cooking vessels found in the northern sector were indicative of mass feeding of sailors and traders who camped there.

Identified structures include: Smaller objects include a wheel-turned blackware ceramic, a few terracotta figurines, shell beads, gems, gold, terracotta, iron nails, copper percussion beater, red fragment of a Roman lamp shade, an engraved emblem of emperor Augustus, an ivory handle, and a wooden toy boat.

[4] The buildings in the northern part of the mound indicative urbanization, with people of different ethnic groups—Indian and non-Indian—but it has not been possible to date them in view of the limited depth of excavations.

He further states that the Brahma Statue had a hole in the centre of the lotus so that the figure could be fixed on the peg of the stalk coming out from Vishnu's navel.

[14] An international conference that the Government of Pondicherry and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs held in October 2004 decided to investigate the Arikamedu site jointly for conservation, as its ancient commercial link with the Romans has been established.