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

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 Bāghshat.

As enough labour was easily secured from the villages of Dāmīn, 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 chalco-
lithic painted pottery of Bampūr. 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 Bampūr piece, e.g. Bam. 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 Balūchistān, Makrān, and Sīs-
tān,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 Shāhī-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 Shāhī-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. XII), which shows some analogy to 'feathered' details on
such Bampūr 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 Shāhī-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.