The Tumuli at Sé Girdan: A Preliminary Report

ON AUGUST 25, 1936, Sir Aurel Stein completed a sixday excavation on the mound called Dinkha Tepe, situated in the Ushnu valley in northwestern Iran, and moved his camp about three miles to the east across the Gadar River to a location near the modern village of Cheshme G61. There he examined "a curious succession of conical mounds stretching in a straight line at short intervals, known as Seh Gird." Stein first thought that the mounds might be "a series of burial tumuli." After examining them and finding them to be composed of a hard gravel, the same type of soil found in the adjacent area, he concluded that they were "natural."' The mounds were, therefore, not excavated, and Stein moved his camp to another area.2 In the summer of 1966, the writer and Robert H. Dyson, Jr., accompanied by several members of the