Darra-e Kur

Darra-e Kūr or Bābā Darwīsh, is an archaeological sites in Badakhshan province in Afghanistan. It's situated just northeast of Kalafgān near the village of Chinār-i Gunjus Khān 63 km east of Taloqan, on the road to Faizabad. The cave is high up on the side of the valley near the hamlet of Bābā Darwīsh.

A rock shelter, well-stratified in silt deposits laid down by a stream. Approximately 800 stone implements were recovered, of two basic types: flint and sickle blades, and large diabase points. Other finds included celts, scrapers, pounders, blades, simple jewellery, fauna (fish, rodent, horse, domesticated sheep and goat, onager), a fragment of a Homonid right temporal bone, many bone implements and three fragments of tin bronze. Ceramics were mostly crude, black wares, sometimes decorated. The only architecture was 80 post-holes, suggestive of tents. The only burials were three articulated goat burials.

Collection:

• AMNH and Kabul Museum - excavated material.

Field-work:

• 1966 Dupree, AMNH - excavations.

References

• Archaeological Gazetter of Afghanistan / Catalogue des Sites Archéologiques D'Afghanistan, Volume I, Warwick Ball, Editions Recherche sur les civilisations, Paris, 1982.