FURTHER NOTES ON THE SUNG WONG T'OI
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evidently of later date. The sherds with partially preserved glaze appear to represent a local attempt to imitate Yüeh ware, while one or two of the smaller glazed fragments are of better quality and may be imported from kilns further north and are definitely of T'ang date.
It need only be added that one fragment, of soft pinkish earthenware, is certainly proto-historic; and that the attribution of the whole of the fragments to the T'ang Dynasty or earlier raises the question whether the earthwork, or at least that part where the cutting was, may not date to the troubled period at the fall of that dynasty. If so, it might be that the Sung army re-used and strengthened an old fortification, very likely adding the high rampart with its ditch, counterscarp, and glacis at the north end, where an attack was evidently expected. The total absence of Sung pottery is certainly an unexpected feature, and if any part of these earthworks still survives, a few trenches dug across them would reveal enough pottery to prove or disprove this view. The turf and spoil removed could easily be put back, as is done in most modern excavations.
One thing is certain: the work at the north end faces Kowloon City, so cannot be a defence work for the salt depot there, as the wall on the Kowloon T'ong gap west of the city was. There was Sung pottery on the hill when the writer saw it, so that an earthwork thrown up in 1276 should contain some pieces of it. The small number of 13 pieces found may well be not enough to yield a satisfactory basis for a conclusion: yet the total absence of both Sung and later porcelain among them points at least to the extreme scarcity of such porcelain at the time the earthwork was thrown up. As the evidence now stands, it is reasonably likely that the earthwork is connected, like the watch-tower recorded as erected on the summit rock, with the defence of the palace of the last Sung emperors.
Acknowledgement
My thanks are owing to the Department of Oriental Antiquities, British Museum, for their expert advice on the pottery from the beach and the earthwork cutting, to which this paper owes much of its value.
Biographical Note
Mr. Schofield served in Hong Kong as a Cadet (Administrative) Officer in the Civil Service between 1911-38. He is well-known for his published articles on the archaeology and geology of the Colony in pre-war years, and is M.A. (Liv. and Oxon).