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

CHAPTER VI.-THE ARCHEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS IN ANAU.

Before the beginning of the excavations at Anau which are here treated, traces of former work were observed at several points on both kurgans. Twenty years or more earlier, the Russian General Komorof had dug through the North Kurgan a trench running from ENE. to WSW. (Compare Report of Roller in Petermanns Mitteilungen, 1889, p. 162.) General Komorof assumed that this kurgan was an artificial hill raised over a grave. Before the beginning of our work in 1904 the trench had a width of 3.6 to 5.8 meters and descended apparently to a depth of about 8 feet above the datum adopted in the 1904 survey of the kurgan, this datum being established at a point on the surface of the plain west of the kurgan.

At the. South Kurgan, both near the summit and on the side, several small holes were observed, possibly also due to Komorof, as similar holes were found on the North Kurgan. A superficial examination showed that the North Kurgan seemed more promising than the southern one, for the surface of the former was strewn with fragments of very ancient hand-made pottery, while the pottery strewn over the surface of the latter gave evidence of belonging to a much younger and more developed ceramic art.

A preliminary examination made on our arrival in 1904 showed the importance of first determining the significance of the northern kurgan.

THE EXCAVATIONS AT THE NORTH KURGAN.

On March 23, 1904, a careful study was made of both walls of the Komorof trench. This examination fully convinced the writer that the great hill had been an inhabited site and consisted of horizontal layers of superimposed settlements—a view which had already been advanced by Pumpelly* as a result of his visit in 1903.

In the western half of the southern wall, at the bottom of the trench, there were two walls of unburnt bricks standing 2.7 meters apart, and a third one in the eastern half 18.7 meters distant from the others. Opposite these, on the eastern half of the northern wall, the writer observed two walls 6.4 meters apart, and in the western half a third, 14 meters distant from the others. Between and above these portions of vertical walls there were horizontal layers of débris, consisting of unburnt bricks, stones, ashes, bones, fragments of pottery, etc. Some of these layers sank away from the walls toward the intervening region, while others rose to the top of the walls and passed over them. Similar walls occurred in the higher layers of the hill. There was, therefore, only one explanation of the origin of the hill; namely, that it had gradually risen as the result of several settlements superimposed one upon the other.

*R. Pumpelly, in Year Book of Carnegie Institution of Washington, No. 2, 1903, p. 278.   83