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

POTTERY FROM CULTURE I, NORTH KURGAN.   125

slightly concaved (fig. 57). Very rarely one finds a steep lip bent inward (fig. 58). This cup may also have an open spout on the lip. Very rarely there occurs a profile with a notched lip.

Technique.—The clay of these cups is, for the most part, washed fine and is a light or reddish-brown. It is almost always well-burnt, and to a great extent porous. The vessels were excellently well formed by hand ; the potters' wheel was as yet unknown. The raw clay was covered with a very thin coat of color, which gave a surface for the painted decoration. Now and then this ground covering shows different tones—probably an effect of the burning. It is especially remarkable that in many cases the vessel was polished before being painted. According to the ground color, we can distinguish three groups :

(a) Vessels with different shades of brown or red ground covering (plate 23, figs. I, 2, and 3; plate 28, fig. 1).

(13) Vessels with whitish-green or yellowish-green " slip. " This also showed now and then a slightly red tone produced in the firing (plate 23, figs. 4, 5, and 6; plate 24, figs. 1 and 2).

(r) Vessels with carmine-red or violet slip. This was laid on thicker than in

the other groups and often flakes off. In many cases one can observe a whitish intermediate ground under the colored slip. This probably served for the better fixation of the slip (plate 24, figs. 4 and 5; plate 25, fig. I).

Technique of the painting.—The color used most frequently for the decoration of the more delicate vessels was black, but bluish-black, violet-black , violet, and

black-brown were also found.   55   56

These colors were for the

most part laid upon the very

thin slip. Only in the case

of the very common groundtech-

ni   tech-

nique is this special

q   P

lacking. In such cases the

57

colors appear directly upon

the plain surface. The or-   °

naments themselves remain   \   \`

mat upon polished ground.

The kind and execution of

the decoration indicate a full mastery of brush technique, and the many shades appearing in the ground tones prove that the decorators of the vases were very expert in the mixture of colors.

The three groups of vases were also found numerously in the mixed layers. Fragments of groups 13 and r were especially noticeable in terrace v (April 4) above the level of + 28 feet 5 inches, and fragments of 13, exactly similar as regards technique and ornamentation, were found (April 6-7) between + 20 feet and + 18 feet in terrace II and March 28-31 between + 18 feet and + 10.5 feet in the west diggings, i, e., in pure and undisturbed layers of the older culture. Of the pottery occurring in the mixed upper layers we can refer to the younger culture only such as can not be found in the pure middle and lower layers.

58