CHAPTER VI.—THE ARCHEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS IN ANAU. 

Before the beginning of the excavations at Anau which are here treated, 
traces of former work were observed at several points on both kurgans. Twenty 
years or more earlier, the Russian General Komorof had dug through the North 
Kurgan a trench running from ENE. to WSW. (Compare Report of Roller in 
Petermanns Mitteilungen, 1889, p. 162.) General Komorof assumed that this 
kurgan was an artificial hill raised over a grave. Before the beginning of our 
work in 1904 the trench had a width of 3.6 to 5.8 meters and descended apparently 
to a depth of about 8 feet above the datum adopted in the 1904 survey of the 
kurgan, this datum being established at a point on the surface of the plain west 
of the kurgan. 
At the South Kurgan, both near the summit and on the side, several small 
holes were observed, possibly also due to Komorof, as similar holes were found 
on the North Kurgan. A superficial examination showed that the North Kurgan 
seemed more promising than the southern one, for the surface of the former was 
strewn with fragments of veryancient hand-made pottery, while the pottery strewn 
over the surface of the latter gave evidence of belonging to a much younger and 
more developed ceramic art. 
A preliminary examination made on our arrival in 1904 showed the impor- 
tance of first determining the significance of the northern kurgan. 
THE EXCAVATIONS AT THE NORTH KURGAN. 
On March 23, 1904, a careful study was made of both walls of the Komorof 
trench. This examination fully convinced the writer that the great hill had been 
an inhabited site and consisted of horizontal layers of superimposed settlements— 
a view which had already been advanced by Pumpelly* as a result of his visit 
in 1903. 
In the western half of the southern wall, at the bottom of the trench, there 
were two walls of unburnt bricks standing 2.7 meters apart, and a third one 
in the eastern half 18.7 meters distant from the others. Opposite these, on the 
eastern half of the northern wall, the writer observed two walls 6.4 meters apart, 
and in the western half a third, 14 meters distant from the others. Between 
and above these portions of vertical walls there were horizontal layers of débris, 
consisting of unburnt bricks, stones, ashes, bones, fragments of pottery, etc. 
Some of these layers sank away from the walls toward the intervening region, 
while others rose to the top of the walls and passed over them. Similar walls 
occurred in the higher layers of the hill. There was, therefore, only one explana- 
tion of the origin of the hill; namely, that it had gradually risen as the result 
of several settlements superimposed one upon the other. 

*R. Pumpelly, in Year Book of Carnegie Institution of Washington, No. 2, 1903, p. 278. 
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