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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Explorations in Turkestan : Expedition of 1904 : vol.2 |
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| Zerafshan Galchas near the Glacier. |
Citation Information
OASES.
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tributary delta descending onto the Zerafshan's great lower terrace. It is a mass of remarkably rich culture remains, about 25 feet thick, and composed of sunburnt bricks, ashes, and bones, and very much pottery well exposed in pits dug out for fertilizer. Three kinds of pottery were found—two of fine red texture, wheel-turned, of which one was dull and the other polished, the third kind a large, coarse, brown jar. One piece of glass was found 5 feet below the top.
Urmitan Kurgan, though small, becomes of interest in its relations to Zerafshan terraces and the tributary Vaushan Darya. Standing in an easily fortified position on the southern side of the canyon, it rises somewhat above the level of terrace G, from which it appears to have been partly severed by erosion since it was abandoned (see fig. 482). A portion of the Vaushan Darya's flood-plain of a higher terrace age, belonging to the ultimate height of alluviation at the close of the Zerafshan's second cycle of erosion, has now been cut down on both sides,
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Fig. 478.—Zerafshan Galchas nèar the Glacier.
leaving a remainder standing as a high inclined table at that tributary's valley mouth. There still remains a shallow channel, once occupied by Vaushan water, leading to the kurgan, but now the Vaushan debouches into the Zerafshan through a canyon in terrace G on the other side of the ancient table.
Kodishar Ku rgan (fig. 483) , or the ruins of ancient Kodishar, is physiographically by far the most interesting abandoned oasis of the valley. Lying on terrace G and just outside the present oasis, it is bounded on two sides by an impassable cliff of the meandering canyon, while round the other two it is bounded by a triple row of moats, ranged one within the other. Altogether its ruins cover about Ioo,000 square feet, with about 4 feet depth of culture remains, composed of clay-mixed cobbles rich in pottery, both glazed and not glazed, with some glass and iron fragments. Tradition places it over a thousand years old and mullahs say the Zerafshan flowed on a level with it, splitting through its moats then spanned
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