The 2005 Season

The Looting of Jam

In 2005, we continued to investigate the illicit excavation of antiquities at Jam. We did this by combining the use of high resolution satellite images (acquired thanks to a grant from the British Embassy in Kabul), Global Positioning Systems and field survey to locate and record the robber holes.

The daunting scale of the task was evident by the end of the first day, so we decided to concentrate on a 50 m strip opposite the Minaret, stretching 225 m from Qasr Zarafshan down to the Hari Rud. From this intensive sample, we could extrapolate estimates for the number of robber holes in the rest of the valley side.   By the end of the season, we had recorded 121 robber holes in this strip, amounting to the destruction of ca. 1,300 m3 of archaeological deposits. Nearly 70% of the robber holes contained definite or possible architecture. The area covered by the robber holes amounts to 11% of the strip – by way of comparison, an archaeological excavation generally excavates only 2-3% of a site over the course of many seasons.

Robber holes on the North Bank of the Hari Rud

Since this part of the North Bank of the Hari Rud is 150 m long, we estimate that there are over 360 robber holes across this one valley slope – this is the scale of the damage that the looting of antiquities has wrought at Jam. On a more positive note, our fieldwork in 2005 also yielded important new discoveries about the archaeological sites in the area: namely, the possible mosque near the Minaret, Ghurid domestic architecture and a kiln.

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Courtyard baked-brick paving and tumbled columns, South Bank Hari Rud.

The 'Mosque' near the Minaret We have now excavated five small trenches in robber holes and along the Hari Rud riverbank, 60-90 m from the Minaret. All these trenches have revealed areas of well-preserved, baked-brick courtyard paving, probably belonging to a large public building. We have also found three parts of baked-brick columns, which seem to have toppled onto flat brick paving from the south. Our geomorphologist, Dr Kevin White (University of Reading), is currently analyzing thin sections of 10-15 cm thick alluvial deposits found above the courtyard paving. Although this study is on-going, we have concluded that the sediments immediately above the paved surface are flood deposits, largely deposited in one major event.  One possible interpretation of the upper coarser grits is that the flood waters became more energetic during the event, perhaps as a wall gave way, allowing greater ingress of flood waters.  The flood does not seem to have affected the higher parts of the building to the west / south, where less overburden and little alluvium cover the pavement – this may explain why the minaret survived.

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Other Survey Work

Our other survey work in 2005 combine visits to, and more detailed recording of, sites known from Herberg and Davary's surveys, and the discovery of new sites, such as a fort which might have protected the eastern approach to the city.

We climbed up to Koh-e Khara, the site of a large cistern, 400 m above Jam.  The local name for the site is Khan-e Dakhtaran Padshah - House of the King's Daughter. Even this inaccessible site has been robbed, but we found a lot of evidence that it was an important residence – turquoise-glazed bricks, glass rims and two sherds of rare Minai ware pottery from Iran.  The cistern measures 8.2 x 4.95 m, with 1 m thick walls.  It is over 4.5 m deep and had a capacity of at least 85,000 litres.  We think that the cistern might have been built to collect snow and ice, rather than rain, to provide cold drinks for the people of Firuzkuh in the summer.

A local guide took us to a well-preserved kiln in the Jam Rud valley.  The kiln is large, measuring over 4 m long, 1.7 m wide and over 1.7 m high.  The kiln consists of at least 6 arches, ca. 52 cm wide, with 12 cm wide flues separating them. A small hole for stoking the fire was noted at the northern end of the kiln.   At the nearby site of Khar Khoj, we found numerous pieces of slag and wasters, suggesting that this part of the site may have been an industrial area.

We did not have time to survey the nearby 12th-13th century Hebrew cemetery properly, but it seems to have been looted too.  We think that the four tombstones with inscriptions which we recorded are new discoveries, not included amongst those published by Gnoli and Rapp.  We would like to survey the cemetery properly in the future, the western and northern extents of the site, the fortifications to the west of Qasr Zarafshan, and a large ruined building at Koshkak – the size of the building suggests that it was very important.

© DCT 2007: This website was last updated on 02/06/07. Any problems, e-mail me: D.C. Thomas. Click here to return to the top of the page.