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I04.   THE ARCHEOLOGICAL, EXCAVATIONS IN ANAU.

stone which were collected daily from the strata as places of settlement were opened up. These finds will be systematically treated in a later chapter. Here we can only refer to such facts as serve to indicate the kind of civilization and the relative chronology of the finds. Now, flint objects were found in all the layers of the hill, the most numerous objects being so-called knives or long scrapers. That these objects were also made on the spot is proved by the many flakes of flint and several flint-nuclei which occurred with them.

Nevertheless, we must not think we have to do with the stone-age culture. Iron is indeed excluded, only modern iron being found in the débris of Komorof's trench, and the absence of iron in such large masses of earth as were removed during the excavations leads us confidently to conclude that this metal was unknown to inhabitants of the North Kurgan. However, objects and fragments of copper* occurred so frequently, not only in the upper layers with the deposits of the younger culture, but also in the middle strata, that we are justified in referring the hill to the metal age. The absence of objects or fragments of metal in the lowest strata would not warrant us in concluding that the metal was unknown in the oldest period of the kurgan, for the pottery of the middle strata was so regularly followed downward into the lowest level of the hill that, notwithstanding the appearance of a special kind of vessels in the lower strata, we can not speak of different cultures or of a change of cultures between the lowest and the middle strata. On the other hand, on account of the different ceramic groups x and y, we must distinguish between the two different periods of early metal age in the evolution of the hill. The distribution of all other finds through these periods will be shown in a systematic treatment of the finds and of the conditions under which they occurred.

THE EXCAVATIONS AT THE SOUTH KURGAN.

GENERAL SUMMARY.
(See Plate 8.)

The discovery of such important facts and finds at the North Kurgan, the importance and derivation of which could no longer be doubted, necessarily stimulated us to attack the South Kurgan ; particularly as its surface was covered with pottery fragments showing a developed wheel technique, and because its height was fully Io feet greater than that of the other. An examination of the southern hill was therefore begun even before work was wholly stopped at the northern one.

In order that the course of the investigation and the criticism of the finds may be followed, it is important to remark that from the base of the roughly elliptical hill there extends toward the north a lower, level, tongue-shaped elevation. The whole hill, therefore, has a form that might cause one to presuppose an irregular and different development.

* Since Dr. Schmidt's report was written, analyses of five out of eleven objects found in the upper and lower culture-strata of the North Kurgan, including the cutting and punching implements, have shown complete absence of tin. Cf. report of Professor Gooch, Part IV.—R. P.