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

in a still more convincing fashion by the examination of the abundant remains of
painted pottery uniformly brought to light through the debris layers which our
trial trenches at the Tal-i-pīr disclosed.

The decoration of these pottery fragments is all monotone, though the
colours, owing to the different strengths of paint used or to imperfections of the
burning, vary from black to shades of brown and dark red. The colour had been
applied before burning and hence is not affected by washing, but often the
painted surface, owing to inadequate burning or the action of salt in the soil, has
rubbed off, leaving the patterns imperfect. The body of all the ceramics, both
painted and plain, varies from a fine hard clay, perfectly baked, to coarse ware
often imperfectly fired and hence more liable to the action of damp and of salt
in the soil. The prevailing colour of the ware is a dirty yellowish-grey,
but in a small number of pieces of superior texture (v. 7; vi. 43) the colour is
creamy and in others (vi. 8, 9) a light red. Apparently all this pottery was
wheel-made. Neither burnishing nor slip has been noticed.

The fragments are mostly from cups and bowls varying greatly in size and
shape as shown by the specimens in Pls. XXVIII, XXIX. Among them may be
specially noted several pieces showing a ring foot (xi. 6; xii. 12) and bottom
portions of cups with a pointed conical base (iii. 6; iv. 16; xii. 18). Among
remains of flat-bottomed vessels of different sizes, that of a bowl, ii. 26, deco-
rated inside with a diaper of lozenges, deserves special mention as having been
found, at a depth of 3 feet, holding a small collection of flint blades. Slightly
lower down there turned up some human bones and, on the same level close by,
a skull.

Among the decorative painted designs simple bands and stripes of varying
widths commonly line the inner or outer rims. Very frequent are designs com-
posed of hachured squares or oblongs, whether complete or halved, and grouped
in different schemes, as seen in i. 7; ii. 66; v. 15, 28, 50; vi. 34, 44, 71; vii. 3,
25, 36, 37; xi. 26. Triangles, mostly hachured, in various combinations are
also very frequent, alternately reversed (i. 11), or with points touching bases or
arranged in hour-glass fashion (v. 43; xi. 17). Comb-like or feathered attach-
ments are seen in ii. 26; iii. 15; vi. 11. Lozenge diapers appear in v. 34; xi. 26.
Disks and circlets are found reserved in a solid black ground in vii. 6; viii. 9, 11,
or hachured inside (v. 2). Simple but characteristic motifs of a geometrical kind
are heart shapes (v. 36; vi. 21); crosses (viii. 16), and 'sigmas' (vi. 11, 33).
While most of these designs can be paralleled also from the chalcolithic painted
pottery of Balūchistān sites, the insertion of fine dotted lines, as in ii. 1, 25; vi. 9;
xi. 3, 24, provides a clear and significant link with the ceramic style of the Perse-
polis mound and of numerous chalcolithic sites subsequently surveyed by me in