OASES. B15 
tributary delta descending onto the Zerafshan’s great lower terrace. It is a mass 
of remarkably rich culture remains, about 25 feet thick, and composed of sun- 
burnt bricks, ashes, and bones, and very much pottery well exposed in pits dug 
out for fertilizer. Three kinds of pottery were found—two of fine red texture, 
wheel-turned, of which one was dull and the other polished, the third kind a large, 
coarse, brown jar. One piece of glass was found 5 feet below the top. 
Urmitan Kurgan, though small, becomes of interest in its relations to Zeraf- 
shan terraces and the tributary Vaushan Darya. Standing in an easily fortified 
position on the southern side of the canyon, it rises somewhat above the level of 
terrace G, from which it appears to have been partly severed by erosion since it 
was abandoned (see fig. 482). A portion of the Vaushan Darya’s flood-plain of 
a higher terrace age, belonging to the ultimate height of alluviation at the close 
of the Zerafshan’s second cycle of erosion, has now been cut down on both sides, 


Fig. 478,—Zerafshan Galchas near the Glacier. 
leaving a remainder standing as a high inclined table at that tributary’s valley 
mouth. ‘There still remains a shallow channel, once occupied by Vaushan water, 
leading to the kurgan, but now the Vaushan debouches into the Zerafshan through 
a canyon in terrace G on the other side of the ancient table. 
Kodishar Kurgan (fig. 483), or the ruins of ancient Kodishar, is physiographic- 
ally by far the most interesting abandoned oasis of the valley. Lying on terrace 
G and just outside the present oasis, it is bounded on two sides by an impassable 
cliff of the meandering canyon, while round the other two it is bounded by a triple 
row of moats, ranged one within the other. Altogether its ruins cover about 
100,000 square feet, with about 4 feet depth of culture remains, composed of clay- 
mixed cobbles rich in pottery, both glazed and not glazed, with some glass and 
iron fragments. ‘Tradition places it over a thousand years old and mullahs say 
the Zerafshan flowed on a level with it, splitting through its moats then spanned 
