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

Close above the huts of Bāghshat there descends a small valley known as
Zehlambān. A gently sloping terrace in the middle not far above its mouth is
covered with low, rudely laid-out cairns of the usual type over an area measuring
about 250 yards from east to west and more than 100 yards across. A dozen of
these cairns were opened. Small bone fragments and potsherds were found in
all of them, while five of them proved to contain also complete vessels of coarse
hand-made pottery. All of them had flat bottoms, lacking bases. The fabric is
of the poorest, being porous clay covered with a whitish slip. A bronze finger
ring and small stone beads originally forming three strings were also among
the finds. More *dambs* of the same type were said to exist higher up the main
valley near the Kamsaptar of the Survey map, on the route towards Khwāsh,
and also at Sahigān in a side valley to the north-east of Dāmīn.

On March 9th we started from Dāmīn for Aptār, a fairly large oasis some 12
miles to the east of Īrān-shahr, which claimed a visit as being of some local
importance. The track led first across a succession of detritus ridges into a wide
torrent-bed joining the Dāmīn river lower down. Leaving this, after 9 miles we
reached the bed of a smaller tributary, at the mouth of which nestles the little
oasis of Katukān. Its 40 or 50 huts were almost all deserted at the time.
Fortunately one of the few villagers left behind had learned of our digging at
Dāmīn, and took us to a small gravel plateau overlooking the date-palm groves
from the south-east, where old pottery might be seen. The plateau, measuring
about 200 yards from east to west, proved to be occupied by the *ziārat* of
Bābā Ḥājī, and most of the ground around it to be covered with Muhammadan
graves. In digging these much of ancient pottery had been unearthed, as proved
by the plentiful fragments of painted prehistoric ware which could be collected
on the surface. From the specimens reproduced in Pl. XI it will be seen that
the decorative designs on this ware, which is mostly of grey colour, correspond
very closely with those found on the chalcolithic pottery of Bampūr and Dāmīn.

Geometric patterns, hachured, cross-hatched, or in fasces (Kat. 4, 22, 24, 27,
28, 33, 010) prevail. Sometimes the outlines of the shapes are scolloped, as in
Kat. 1–5, 25. The row of stylized mountain sheep reappears in 20, 011 with
raised ridges, straight or wavy, separating the decorative bands. That there is
close agreement also in shapes is proved by the well-preserved small bowl, 018,
and the little jar, 017 (Pl. XXXII). These were obtained from villagers who had
taken them into use. The bowl, which is a warm grey colour, has a roughly painted
border on the outside, and the jar shows the bulging sides common in the Nāl
type of pottery. Other finds, too, such as the fragments of an alabaster cup and
of a glass bangle decorated like one from Bampūr, point to an approximately
identical period.