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

the river about 1½ miles below the Suntsar Levy post. I had carefully surveyed
the site in 1928, and the results of the search then made of its surface remains
and of the trial excavations carried out during a week's stay have been fully
recorded in my account of 'An Archaeological Tour in Gedrosia'.⁴ Hence it
will suffice to make the briefest reference here to such supplementary relics of
household ware, in use during chalcolithic times, as could still be picked up
on the surface. Rain, rare as it is in this region and never prolonged, had
sufficed to wash them to the surface. Among such specimens may be mentioned a
small pottery jar (Sut. 1; Pls. III, XXXI); fragments of cylindrical pottery vessels
with perforated walls, probably used for heating or warming food (Sut. 5;
Pl. I); of red or grey clay bangles (Sut. 16; Pl. X), very numerous as at all
chalcolithic sites of Balūchistān; of ornaments of shell (Sut. 22; Pl. X). The
abundance of small stone implements in use at the time is illustrated by more
than two dozen flint 'blades' or 'scrapers' (Sut. 37; Pl. XXX), mostly small,
being collected during our brief halt. The finds of small copper pieces and of
the fragments of a dark grey glass bangle (Sut. 13) are in full accord with
previous observations made at this interesting early site. The striking rarity
of painted pottery previously noted at Sutkagēn-dōr accounts for the fact that
not a single specimen of such ware could be found now.

The Suntsar post is the southernmost of the small stations along the border
which are held by detachments of the Makrān Levy Corps, as if they were burgi
of a Roman limes on some desertic African or Near Eastern frontier. There
we were met by Captain V. M. H. Cox, Assistant Resident in Makrān. The
orders kindly given by him provided for camel transport to take us into the
Dashtiārī tract as well as for an escort of eight Levy camel riders who were to
remain with us until the expected Persian escort should join us. Before our
start on the following morning, January 7th, an opportunity was offered for
some rapid archaeological work at a small group of burial cairns situated some
200 yards to the south-west of the post, and on the same gravel terrace over-
looking the river-bed. They had escaped attention on my first rapid passage
through Suntsar, being marked merely by scattered low stone heaps, some two
dozen in all. In the reports on my previous explorations in Balūchistān and
Makrān I have had repeated occasion to describe such burial sites, where the
scanty remains of human bodies previously exposed to birds and beasts are to