Sec. ii] UP THE BAMPUR RIVER 115
the same ridge about two furlongs farther south, where prehistoric painted pottery could be seen strewn on the surface ( Fig. 32) . A little lower down there lies above the river bank a small date-palm plantation with the few huts of Bâghshat.
As enough labour was easily secured from the villages of Dâmin, it was possible to clear two trenches each about 50 feet long down the slope to a depth of about 4 feet, where the natural layer of detritus was struck. The yield of painted prehistoric pottery was abundant from about one foot from the surface and uniform throughout. As the specimens reproduced in Pl. XI show, the decorative designs represented bear closest resemblance to those of the chalcolithic painted pottery of Bampûr. Apart from hachured geometric motifs of the same type as found there (Dmn. A. 6, 44-6, 54, 62, 68, 76; B. 104, &c.) and from others where geometric patterns are formed by fasces of fine parallel lines (A. 64 b, 75, 89; B. 110 a, b; c. 127), we found again the row of mountain sheep ( A. 4) and the highly stylized trees (A. 60) . Animal and bird figures of a peculiar type are seen in A. 22, 75; B. 110 b. The insertion of a raised wavy ridge amidst the painted decoration in pieces like 16, 44-46, is a characteristic feature also of more than one Bampûr piece, e.g. Barn. A. 300, 338.
But what is of special interest is the contact which some of the designs prove with prehistoric sites far away to the east and north-east. Thus the row of Sigmas, familiar from chalcolithic ware of Northern Balûchistân, Makrân, and Sistan,3 reappears in A. 48, 72, 88, 96. Particularly striking is it to find the Svastika motif, so common on the inside of bowls of funeral furniture at Shâhi-tump,4 used here, too, in the identical fashion for the decoration of bowls (A. 67; B. 111; Pl. XII) . There is, however, a difference in the Svastika being here three-limbed while at Shâhi-tump it is ordinarily five-limbed. Another design peculiar to the inside of bowls is the fourfold repetition of a `feathered' W shape seen in B. 112, 120, 121 (Pl. )(II), which shows some analogy to `feathered' details on such Bampûr fragments as Bam. c. 70, 327 (Pl. VIII) .
Finally, it deserves to be noted that the grey fabric of much of the painted ware and the `washy' colours used for the designs, changing in the same piece from dark grey to different shades of brown and purple, strongly recall the pottery used for funeral deposits at Shâhi-tump. This and other indications have suggested to me that the slope where the trenches A and B were cut may have been used for prehistoric burials, and that these were subsequently disturbed by the digging of old Muhammadan graves. Several such graves were disclosed in the course of our excavation.
3 See N. Balûchistân Tour, Pl. XIII, R.G. 5, 0135, 011.
19; Tourin Gedrosia, pp. 34; 36, 91,106, 120; Inner- 4 For specimens see Tour in Gedrosia, Pls. XV,
most Asia, ii. pp. 957-69, and iii. Pl. CXIII, x.G. XVI.
IIIFカラー高解像度
