É. Apor (ed.): Stein, Aurel: Old Routes of Western Iran. (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Ser. B 2.)
Chapter I.—In Westernmost Färs
I O IN WESTERNMOST FÄRS [Chap. I throughout a great variety of geometrical patterns closely resembling those seen in the painted ware from other chalcolithic sites in Färs that I had examined, as will be readily seen on comparison with Pis. XXI-XXVI of my Ancient Per sis. Fragments of stylized animal and bird designs are seen only in x, 3, 4, Pl. I, while 3, 5-10 show various geometrical designs. It deserves to be noted that in the lowest layer painted ware was met but rarely, while plain potsherds of coarse fabric were frequent. From this earliest stratum came an almost complete hand-made bowl (1, Pl. XXVII), found lying by the foot of a much-injured skeleton laid out from north-west to south-east. Between the bowl and the right foot were found the bones of what apparently was a lamb. Worked flints, mainly blades, were numerous throughout. From the evidence secured it is safe to conclude that this well-watered ground, close on 7000 feet above sea-level, had in the fourth-third millennium B.C. known conditions of civilized life not unlike those prevailing at the same period in much lower valleys of Färs, such as Firüzäbäd, Fasä and Däräb. Our work at Tul-i-gird was made very trying all through by bitterly cold winds sweeping across the elevated plateau. Equally troublesome was the tenacious mud into which the preceding heavy rain had converted the soft loam of the ground and the surface of the mound. Three mounds (tappas ) which had been reported to the south-east proved, when visited across fertile ground at a distance of to 2 miles from Tul-i-gird, to be natural terraces separated from the rest of the plateau by deep-cut ravines. One of them, judging from coarse potsherds and glass fragments
