ANCIENT SITES. 9 
Se\-eral other knrgfans that we examined, which had been partially cut awa\- 
for brick-making, etc., and .some of these were much larger and higher than that 
at Anau, showed tlie same horizontal stratification of earth, burnt earth, a.shes, 
charcoal, and fragments of bones and of pottery. In the upper part of some of 
these we obser\-ed traces of walls of unbunied bricks. The onh- artifacts found in 
Fig. 4. — Section through a Small MufBe-shaped Object in the Anau Tumulus. 
these were the simplest form of flat stone for grinding grain (like those found in 
the Anau kurgan) and some flat stones, each with a hole drilled wholh- or partially 
through it from both sides. 
ANCIENT TOWNS. 
The absence of easih' obtainable stone for constniction throughout the low- 
lands of Turkestan determined the use, almost exclusiveh-, in constniction, of clay, 
both unburned and burned. Unburned clay predominated innnenseh-, used both 
as sun-dried bricks and in hea\y layers of raw clay. In consequence of this, all 
ruins older than a late Mussulman period are represented only b\- accunuilations of 
earth filled with broken pottery and fragments of burned bricks. These accumu- 
lations are flat-topped mounds, ranging up to half a square mile or more in area 
and from 15 to 20 feet upward in height, and in places, as at ]VIer\-, occurring in 
groups covering man}- square miles. They occur within areas in which now, or 
formerl}-, water was accessible, and are found iiho more or less buried in sands 
beyond the mouths of the retreating rixers, in places once fertile and now desolate. 
Ritiiis near A/rck J\iztr.—\ t\pe of regional desolation and abandonment is 
in the territory' between the lower Atrek and the Caspian. Here, over an area of 
many .square miles, are the ruins of cities, 30 or 40 miles from the river Atrek, the 
