National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

and the Turfan depression. Near to the south of the small mosque in
the very mouth of the valley we found a few painted potsherds on the
ground. Time did not allow of any true investigation.
The ware is red and hard-burnt; the clay has been mixed with few
but rather coarse grains of sand. The colour is homogeneous through
the ware. At least some of the fragments have a slip of darker red on
both sides; the decoration consists of black lines. Pl. 2: 5 is from the
rim of a wide bowl; the same arrangement with two parallel vertical
lines recurs on two more sherds.¹ A couple of sherds are from
the rims of wide bowls, probably quite low. Pl. 2: 6 shows a more complicated pattern
of bent lines. Fig. 1 is from a thin-walled vessel, but the other sherds are 7—8 mm.
thick.
Professor J. G. Andersson has kindly drawn my attention to the general resem-
blance between these few sherds and his finds of painted pottery in Kansu from an
intermediary stage between his second and third period. This material is still un-
published.
Among Professor T. J. Arne's material from the Turkoman steppe we find cer-
tain general similarities as regards the ware, the colours and the ornamentation. I
refer to our Pl. 2: 6 and a sherd from Chakhir-tepe (Bylin-Althin, Fig. 16). I have
no intention, however, of drawing any far-reaching conclusions as to cultural rela-
tions out of this single conformity between one small potsherd from the Turfan re-
gion and another small potsherd from the Turkoman steppe near the Caspian Sea.
Not only is the material insufficient, it is also of such nature that it cannot be made
the basis of any sound conclusions.

C. TOQSUN.

When approaching the Toqsun oasis along the main road from Turfan a place
yielding some painted potsherds was discovered in April 1928. The road cuts right
across the site; as some human teeth were found it may be a destroyed grave. It is
situated about 100 m. to the north of the Toqsun river and less than 1 km. to the east
of the bridge across the river in question. The ground is made up of loess-like clay,
which further to the east is eroded to form small yardang² ridges.
The potsherds are homogeneous both as regards ware and decoration, and the
vessels have probably been of only one type.
The ware is rather thin, light brick-red in colour and of pretty good quality.
The decoration of the outside of the sherds consists of vertical black lines reaching
from rim to bottom, Fig. 2 and Pl. 2: 8—9. On the inside of the rim there is a row