国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

Sec. in   REMAINS OF PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENTS   951

ware, marked K.G. in the List, the piece K.G. 07. a showing a well-drawn goat's head deserves mention. The dozen fragments of wheel-turned alabaster vessels (K.G. 07, 141, &c.) and worked stones (0116-18) were also collected here, among them a well-finished arrow-head (0206) picked up by myself. Among the few fragments of bronze also found here, 0295 (Pl. CXVI) appears to be a knife tip. That the mound was not regularly occupied at later times was shown by the great rarity of glazed potsherds, of which I here noticed only very few undecorated pieces. On the other hand the wind-eroded area within and around Kalàt-i-gird, where the many specimens of glazed pottery, glass fragments, &c., were collected, yielded no remains whatever of the chalcolithic culture.

It was on proceeding to the NE. of Râmrûd, into a region that had known no cultivation during recent times and had probably, in the earlier Muhammadan period, been occupied only at detached points, that almost every mound rising above the desert plain was found to carry relics of prehistoric life. The first examined, R.R. 1, rising some 20 feet in the midst of a belt of well-defined Yardangs some 3 miles from Râmrûd, bears indeed a small decayed structure which, judging from its naine (Langar-i-Haji) and masonry, may have served as a roadside post in Muhammadan times. But by far the greater part of the potsherds strewing the top of the mound, some 120 yards long, were of plain or painted chalcolithic ware, while stone implements and fragments of stone jars were comparatively numerous (see the arrow-heads, R. R. 1. 043, 46-7) (Pl. CXII). Later occupation is attested by ` ribbed ' pieces, like 05, 33, 4o, and a few fragments of glazed pottery and glass.

The whole summit, about 140 yards by loo, of mound R.R. II, about a mile farther on, is thickly covered with pottery debris, all of chalcolithic make, and slags from kilns. The specimens of stone brought away include two imperfectly worked implements (R.R. 11. o3o—I), the fragment of a stone jar, 028, and a stone bead, 032. Nearly 3 miles beyond lies a small but conspicuous mound, R.R. III, about loo yards long and as much across, covered with a thick layer of potsherds, both plain and painted. Among the specimens taken from here the complete jars R.R. III. 013, 16 (Pl. CXIV), and the neck of a vessel, R.R. III. oio (Pl. CXIV), decorated with the well-drawn head of an Ibex, deserved notice. Among the pieces of worked stone, 021-30, is a broken blade of jasper, which, as Mr. Reginald Smith points out, with its ` battered ' back and the used edge opposite shows the closest resemblance to the blade from the Lop Desert illustrated in Fig. 25 in Mr. R. A. Smith's paper on the finds of my second expedition.2 The resemblance is of quasi-chronological interest, as this form is one of which the first examples belong to the Madeleine cave period.

A number of isolated mounds, no doubt of similar origin to those so far described, were sighted in the distance to the west of the route followed between R.R. 1 and R.R. III. They were not visited by myself. But there is every reason to believe that the miscellaneous small objects, brought to me by the men who carried water from the Tâsuki well, about 5 miles SW. of R.R. III, to my camp while it stood at the ruin R.R. v, were picked up on these mounds. These objects, marked R.R. in the List, consist mainly of chalcolithic pottery, and of worked stones and bronze fragments such as are ordinarily associated with it. That there are among them pieces of glazed pottery, glass, and paste is not surprising, since lines of old canals, traceable across this tract and shown on the map, indicate at least partial occupation of it during later times.

We crossed one of these canals, a small and obviously late one intended to carry water towards Kundar and Hauzdâr, as we proceeded from R.R. III to the ENE. My attention had been attracted there by a massive ruin rising on a stretch of ` Dasht ' and a little over 2 miles distant. This ruin, R.R. iv, known as Burj-i-chekar (Figs. 48o, 481), proved the first to be discovered of

2 See R. A. Smith, ` The Stone Age in Chinese Turkestan ', Man, 1911, No. 52.

6F2

Mound R.R. I.

Worked stones, &c., from R.R. II, III.

Relics from ground towards Teisuki well.

Ruins of Burj-ichâhar.