AGE OF THE MERV KURGANS. 227, 
isolated hillocks; hence the name ‘“‘ Kirk Tepe,” or the “Forty Hills.” The inclo- 
sure inside the walls is practically level and contains but a small amount of pottery. 
What few potsherds there are consist partly of glazed ware. ‘The resemblance 
to Ghiaur Kala lies in the fact that here, as in the great city, the northwestern 
wall is interrupted by an inner circular inclosure with higher walls—an inclosure 
which appears to have been built before the main walls were erected, as may be 
seen from the way in which the line of the large square is interrupted in the lower 
figure of plate 60. Adjoining the walls of this acropolis are two small platforms, 
the sites, perhaps, of houses or palaces. In every respect Kirk Tepe seems to be 
a small and ephemeral imitation of Ghiaur Kala. 
The dating of the primitive mounds is even more doubtful than that of the 
highly developed type. The great change and development that took place from 
the time of the earliest kurgans, with their unadorned pottery, to the time of the 
latest, with their glass and glaze, must indicate a considerable lapse of time, 
measured by many centuries. The most feasible means of dating the earlier 
ruins seems to lie in connecting them with the remains of other civilizations. At 
Yaz Tepe,¥the largest kurgan of the primitive type, three bits of pottery were 
found bearing a painted design, a sort of highly developed tent pattern, done 
in brown. The style of pottery and the style of ornament are both quite different 
from anything else found in the kurgans or in Ghiaur Kala, and the fragments 
seem like remnants preserved from an earlier time, or else stray bits imported 
from a distance. To an eye unskilled in ceramics, they appear to belong to the 
same type as the pottery of the oldest culture-stratum of the older village kurgan 
at Anau. 
This raises the question of the relation between the people who quickly built 
the kurgans of sun-dried brick at Merv and elsewhere, and those who in neighboring 
regions slowly built the larger kurgans of ashes, bones, walls of houses, and other 
remnants of human occupation. At Merv both sorts of mounds have not been 
discovered. In the vicinity of Lutfabad and Kaaka, however, between Merv 
and Askhabad the writer noted that along the base of Kopet Dagh in the ‘“‘atok”’ 
or ‘‘skirt’’ of the mountains of northern Persia, two sorts of kurgans exist side 
by side.. The older and larger have very gentle slopes and rounded tops, and show 
no evidence of any special plan in their construction. They seem to be like those 
of Anau. ‘The others are, on the whole, smaller, and, by their steeper sides, show 
that they are younger. Their flat tops and apparently square form show a distinct 
plan in their erection, and the hasty views obtained from passing railroad trains 
suggest that they belong to the same class as those at Merv. 
Near Askhabad kurgans of the two types exist more clearly side by side. At 
Anau, it is needless to say, are the two large mounds of the old village type. Half 
a mile to the southeast of the center of Askhabad stands another smaller kurgan, 
flat-topped and rather steep-sided, while a mile or more to the east is a second 
of the same sort that appears flat-topped from below, but is really surmounted 
by a wall like Ersar Tepe (No. 13) at Merv. These last two kurgans are square 
in plan and seem very much like the smaller kurgans at Merv. ‘The exact relation 
of the various types of mounds can not be determined without extensive excavation. 
