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Explorations in Turkestan : Expedition of 1904 : vol.1 |
142
THE ARCHEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS IN ANAU.
Forms.—As the entire family is, upon the whole, rather rare, the series of forms is also very limited. There occur for the most part the simplest bowls or cups, similar to figs. 144 and 145. High, projecting feet are also recognized on some broken pieces. Forms with profiles, like figs. 187-189, are new. Ornaments have not been found at all on fragments of red pottery.
COARSE WARE.
In connection with the good wheel pottery, which one must designate as " art pottery," there was also a coarse ware in use, made for the most part of coarse and badly washed clay. Badly burnt vessels, made both upon the wheel and with the hand, were found. Of this kind is the pithos a found in terrace B (plate 18, fig. 8). Near a skeleton in terrace B was found a vessel of this technique (mentioned above), height 16.5 cm. (plate 13, fig. 4).
ORNAMENTATION.
As regards the ornamentation, in the middle strata it plays a surprisingly unimportant part. The more the wheel technique gained in importance in forming the vessels, the more did the potter seek to express beauty largely through form. Ornamentation is produced partly through incision, partly painted.
( I) INCISED ORNAMENT.
The incised technique is confined to the gray ware and vessels of light-colored clay. Thus far none has been found in the red monochrome ware. On vessels of light-colored clay, the decoration is in the form of wavy lines and horizontal grooves. A piece of very fine light-brown clay, shown on plate 14, fig. 1, comes from + 23 feet 7 inches to + 21 feet 5 inches in terrace B. The fragment shown in plate 14, fig. 2, has a correctly executed zone-decoration, with groups of parallel wave-lines and horizontal grooves. It was found in the upper digging at + 29 feet.
Of another kind, but very delicate in execution and effect, are the ornaments on the fragments of fine brown clay shown in plate 14, figs. 3 and 4. One of them, with fine, parallel, short striæ andvandyke patterns, was found in the upper digging near pithos d, at +25 feet 5 inches; the other, with rows of similar short striæ, came from the " mixed " layer of terrace A, above the level of + 22 feet.
On gray vessels the incised ornamentation, like the technique of the vessels themselves, is both fine and coarse, but it is on the whole rare. Marginal pieces of steep-walled beakers and bowls occur in fine technique, some ornamented with delicate horizontal ridges, the pattern executed in very fine scratched lines. These may be parallel wave-lines, as in plate 15, fig. 2 (from terrace B between +21 feet 5 inches and + 23 feet 7 inches) ; or patterns of semicircular curves as in plate 15, fig. 4 (from terrace C, at + 26 feet 2 inches to +29 feet) ; or again, of obliquely placed groups of lines with fringed edges, as in plate 15, fig. 3 (from terrace B between +21 feet 5 inches and +23 feet 7 inches) and plate 15, fig. 1 (from terrace C between +23 feet 2 inches and +26 feet 2 inches). Somewhat coarser are the patterns on vessels with thick walls, but of fine clay ; being trellis triangles, as in plate 15, fig. 5 (from terrace C, between +19 feet 5 inches and + 21
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