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Notes on Prehistoric Mounds in the Caucasus and Turkestan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2013
Extract
On the occasion of a journey by railway across the Caucasus and into Western Turkestan in March, 1919, I found the opportunity of making a few notes upon objects of archaeological and ethnological interest in these areas. Unfortunately it was impossible to obtain any very detailed information as to mounds and other sites; and these notes are, in consequence, hardly more than a record of things observed en route. I was not able to obtain specimens of pottery from any of the mounds here referred to.
The area dealt with is the ground in the Caucasus covered by the main railway line from Batum to Baku, and in Turkestan by the plains at the foothills of the Balkhan and Kopet Dagh ranges over which the Central Asiatic railway runs eastwards from Krasnovodsk, its Caspian terminus.
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- Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1919
References
page 114 note 1 These measurements are, of course, approximate.
page 114 note 2 This cemetery consists of about fifty monoliths and ten or fifteen large obelisks. The monoliths are all pillars of the crystalline basalt which occurs in many parts of the Caucasus range, but principally near Mount Kazbek. The obelisks are carefully built of trimmed stone, and stand about 6 feet high. Two similar obelisks occur near Sodon on the northern slopes of the Caucasus, south-west of Vladikavkaz. Both belong to the year 1774 and are the tombstones of Tatar ‘Lords of the Marches,’ in the territory of the Ossetes (see Klaproth, , Voyage au Mt. Caucase et en Georgie, 1823, vol. i. p. 451Google Scholar). Monoliths are typical of Ossetian burials (see Klaproth, vol. ii. p. 259), but are for the most part characteristic of Moslem and not of Christian burials. The Akstafa cemetery is thus probably of Tatar origin.
page 115 note 1 The only scientific excavations carried out in Turkestan are those of the American expedition of 1908, at the prehistoric site of Anau, some fifteen kilometres east of Askhabad. See Pumpelly: Exploration in Turkestan, 1905 and 1908 (2 vols.).
page 116 note 1 The mounds are usually 100 to 200 feet long, and 30 to 50 feet high. See Pumpelly: op. cit. I. p. 7.
page 116 note 2 On the French map published by the ‘Service Géographique de l'Armée’ (1901), a very large number of mounds are shown along the line of the River Tejend (the ancient Arius) between Tejend and Sarakhs and along the foothills. I was unable to verify any of these.
page 117 note 1 I was not able to get farther east than a point three miles west of Ravnini (i.e. about 100 miles west of the Oxus).
page 117 note 2 For the identification of this and other ancient sites in Colchis, see Οί ᾿Ελληνες ἐν Καυκάσῳ by I. H. Καλφογλοῦ (1908), p. 21.
page 117 note 3 The site at Anau, excavated by Mr. Pumpelly, was clearly situated on this trade route. The connection with the West was shown both by (a) anthropological and (b) archaeological evidence:—
(a) Professor Sergi, reporting on the Anau skulls, sees no material difference between them and skulls of the Mediterranean variety. There is no trace of anything Mongolian about them. He concludes: “The results shown give a certainty to my hypothesis of some years ago on the probable penetration into Central Asia of one branch of the Mediterranean variety.” Pumpelly, , op. cit. Vol. II., p. 446Google Scholar.
(b) Armenian obsidian, a copper sickle of the same type as those found in the 6th city of Troy, and some pottery types that recall those of Europe, all provide links with the West.