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

below the present surface of the plain, its western extension, which is overgrown
and hidden by the alluvial strata and irrigation silts, extends to a depth of at
least 27 feet, where its culture-strata contain the pottery that belongs only in the
lower culture. North Kurgan west shaft II, after sinking through 15 feet of
irrigation silts, was continued to — 30 feet* through alluvial strata. Down to
— 22 feet these contained fragments of the pottery peculiarly characteristic of
the upper culture II, i. e., of the strata above the level of 45 feet above the base
of the main mass of the kurgan; while from — 25 to — 27 feet there was found
only the pottery of the lower culture. The conditions under which the pottery
was found at — 19 feet were such as would seem to exclude the possibility of its
having been washed into place. The pieces were sharply angular and they were
found by R. W. Pumpelly to be associated with bones and charcoal—conditions
indicating contemporaneity of age for the pottery, bones, charcoal, and alluvial clay.

Now we have seen that in shaft F, at the South Kurgan, pottery of the lower
culture of that kurgan was found in alluvial strata at 26 feet below the level of
the plain, i. e., 7 feet deeper under the surface than the level at which the upper-
culture pottery of the North Kurgan was found in the shaft near the North Kurgan.
Therefore, the whole of the growth from — 26 feet upward occurred after the
founding of the South Kurgan. Assuming that the pottery, bones, and charcoal
were left by man on the plain when it stood — 19 to — 20 feet at the North Kurgan,
we have evidence that the alluvial growth in shaft F of the South Kurgan is a
younger growth than that in the west shaft II of the North Kurgan, for artefacts
of the younger South Kurgan could not become naturally buried at a deeper
horizon than those of the older kurgan in alluvial strata of the same growth.
On this evidence the alluvial strata, which are shown in shafts D, E, and F to have
overgrown the older settlement on the extension of the South Kurgan, must belong
to a younger growth than that of the strata in North Kurgan west shaft II, and
degradation must have intervened between the two. We have not found either
pottery or charcoal in any of our shafts at a greater depth than 27 feet below
the surface. And these traces of man's occupation of the region were so abun-
dantly scattered over the contemporary surface that we find them in all shafts
at various depths down to 27 feet. We have, therefore, evidence of three separate
growths of alluvial strata between the founding of the North Kurgan and the
beginning of irrigation, and of two intervening degradations.

While these growths and degradations doubtless affected the whole surface
of the oasis to a certain extent, the full extent of their action was apparently
limited to the principal channel or channels through which the water found its
way from the mountains to the desert. This is still faintly shown by careful
observation in the topography of the present surface, and it is recorded also in
the character of the sediments pierced by our shafts. The "irrigation canal,"
a small distributing ditch, shown on plate 2 as passing by the east side of the
South Kurgan and to the west of the North Kurgan, follows a broad but only