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

stretching up to its foot would facilitate such eruptive material being carried
down by floods. But it was rather puzzling to find small quantities of the same
black stone deposited also throughout the layers of the mound where exposed by
cutting trenches. The only explanation which suggests itself to me is that these
stones got embedded in the earth used for mud walls of dwellings or else were
laid down to form a flooring for mat-huts or similar primitive habitations.

The painted pottery found both on the surface and at varying depths of the
mound (for specimens see Pl. XIX) shows such common characteristics that it
can safely be attributed to a single protracted phase of production. Its chief
features may be briefly described as follows. The fabric is generally a well
levigated and thoroughly burnt clay over which in most pieces a pale-buff slip
has been applied. In some fragments the slip is red, turning sometimes into
reddish-brown, purple, or plum colour. The paint used for the design is ordi-
narily black, but in some cases shading into purple or brown. In one or two
polychrome specimens (532, 534; Pl. XIX) a grey tint is also employed in the
design. In comparatively rare pieces a polychrome effect is obtained by adding
over a white, buff, or red ground designs in black and purple, or else over
ground partly red and partly purple a decorative pattern in grey and black. On
some pieces one or more zigzag lines are reserved in the ground colour, running
through heavy masses of black or black and grey. Such examples have usually
also broad patches or bands of dull crimson (532, 534). In almost all painted
pottery the colours resist any moderate rubbing. This, however, is not the case
where crimson is applied; this colour is usually not fired on, or else the colour
is non-vitrifiable and is therefore not fixed by firing.

In the patterns the predominance of straight lines is a very striking feature,
and this makes the variety of the patterns produced with these limited com-
ponents, as illustrated by the specimens shown in Plate XIX, all the more
remarkable. Triangles, squares, lozenges, and zigzags are the commonest ele-
ments used. In their combination we note real inventive power. Hachuring and
cross-hatching is in frequent use to give 'body' to designs. On the other hand,
patterns composed of curved lines, such as leaf-shapes, festoons, &c., are ex-
tremely rare. This and the total absence of animal figures or representations of
natural objects such as trees constitute a marked difference from the decoration
of painted ware found at other Bampūr sites. If to this difference is added con-
sideration for the abundance of worked stones and hand-made pottery, including
mat-marked ware such as 258 (Pl. XIX), it seems justifiable to draw the
conjectural conclusion that the remains of Chāh Ḥusainī belong to an earlier
phase of chalcolithic civilization than those, fairly uniform in type, recovered
from the other sites we succeeded in tracing within the Bampūr area.