16 THE FORMING OF THE OASIS OF ANAU.
The excavation consisted in maintaining a strictly horizontal floor which was sunk I or 2 feet daily. His report shows how the hill was made up of houses, and how, in sinking, house-floors were exposed, one immediately underlying the other, and all marked by hearths and inserted bake-oven pots, and by the skeletons of children, which it was the custom of these people to bury tinder the dwellings.
In order of age the North Kurgan is the oldest and the ruined city of Anau the youngest. The North Kurgan had been abandoned before the founding of the South Kurgan, and this in turn before the city was started ; and I shall show that there is evidence of several time-gaps of greater or less duration in the sequence of the cultures.
Fig. 4.—Ruined City of Anau.
The city of Anau was abandoned only during the past century. Its gates are gone, its walls have crumbled, and of the houses built of burnt bricks only dilapidated walls are standing. The surface of the interior is irregular, great depressions marking the places where were once extensive pools. These water-basins form one of the charms of the cities of Turkestan, where they are inclosed in paved steps that descend from terraces on which stand widespreading trees and tea-housesthe lounging and gossiping centers of daily life. In Anau only the gaping depressions remain to mark how rapidly desolation may obliterate the traces of busy life.
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