probably not only the villages around them, but also travelers on the Silk Road passing the sites, and the town of Sabzevar. The plants were in rapid decay, and at Sabzevar II two of the three large domes – and the top of the third - have collapsed and disintegrated, together with the unlined ice pits, almost without a trace. All of the remaining ice house domes are of a similar size and shape and could well have been constructed by the same builders. In terms of dome design, the Razavi Khorasan ice houses generally displayed a pointed cone or a paraboloid shape. At Khaf (YC 116), the ongoing rebuilding of the cone, involving the use of baked bricks, probably to be subsequently covered by kâh-gel plaster, concealed the original shape and materials used. All Razavi Khorasan mud brick ice houses appeared to have had ventilation holes at the top of the dome. At Ardoghesh (YC 112, horizontal tree trunks at two levels), Kashmar (YC 115, rings of tree stumps at 3 m height intervals), and Khaf (YC 116, tree branches spread over the inner dome surface), wood had been built into the dome. Most ice houses had doors at their east and west sides, yet at Soltanabad (YC 114) and Kashmar (YC 115) they were located at the north/south and north/east sides, respectively. At Sabzevar, an imaginative use of the old ice pits occurred. The so-called Maidan Gusfand (YC 110, “Sheep Square”) ice house, situated less than a kilometer east of the Sabzevar complexes, had been converted into a restaurant, probably serving traders at the regular sheep markets in the adjacent square. A number of ice houses in Sabzevar – allegedly five, however not identified - had been used as ammunition dumps by the military for almost forty years (Ghobadian 1998: 336). Three examples of ice houses built of baked bricks occured in the southern part of the province: the village ice house at Najmabad (YC 120), and two caravansary/fort ice houses at Amrani (YC 118 and 119, see below). The reasons for this local use of baked bricks are not clear, but it could be that the area north of Gonabad is plagued by violent storms, sometimes in connection with rain, which would attack and damage mud brick structures. Or, it could be that these ice houses were constructed by water reservoir builders, who traditionally used baked bricks. No vents appeared to have been used in the baked brick ice houses. The Rahen ice house (YC 121) had been converted into a water reservoir, which confirms the suspicion that it was built of baked
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Ice Houses of Iran