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M. W. WELCH
below the original level of the surface before artillery practice began). They prove only that there were people who spent some time there. Although I chose the sites as good places to live, I have so far found no strata, no remains of fires, and no other signs of habitation.
I have combed the adjacent, unshelled, non-eroded areas for true surface finds, and, despite many days of search, I have found none at all. Hence I have a theory that the artifacts came to be where I found them as a result of shell penetration and explosion. After being thrown into the air, they fell around the area of the impact. (I have several items that seem to prove the point: one is a small chert adze—chert is an amorphous, massive stone, closely allied to flint—found in two pieces, each on opposite sides of a rock that it must have hit as it fell and then separated. Another is a larger adze, two fragments of which were found about twenty feet apart, and shattered in a way that can only be accounted for by an explosion. There are also two matching potsherds discovered on opposite sides of a ridge of hardened kaolin about three yards apart). The shells used on this firing range, I am told, penetrate about four feet and the objects found could have been located anywhere between the surface and the deepest point of penetration.
I have not, as I have already mentioned, found any strata or deposits anywhere. There are several reasons why this might be the case. The inhabitants of the island may have been nomadic and lived here only during certain seasons, coming by boat to cut wood (there is a theory that Hong Kong was well forested in those days), or to dig kaolin for shipment to centres of pottery manufacturing (the latter I think is the probable raison d'être of my sites). The actual settlements of this area may have been located mostly where we find the present inhabitants, on sites which have been lived on without interruption until modern times. This would explain the absence of strata, and, if it is correct, no strata will be found until it is possible to trench on the site of an existing village. I understand that such a project is planned for the future.
Before I describe some of the finds, I want to explain the basis on which I have classified them. Father D. J. Finn began his researches on Lamma Island and later on with Father R.