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W. SCHOFIELD
Antiquities in 1939, bulletin no. 11. On the Danh Do La site, a sand-bank, he describes a section 4.5 m. above sea level, where at 45 to 89 cm. below the ground surface is a culture stratum with potsherds, stones and pumice. His derivation of the pumice from the East Indies, while possible, is perhaps less likely than my suggestion of a more northern origin, as the prevailing winds in the South China seas are undoubtedly north-east to south-east, and typhoons generally make their approach felt by violent easterly gales. All but three of the pumice-bearing sandbanks in Hong Kong face east, and one of the three, Tai Wan in Lamma, faces south.
LIFE AND INDUSTRY OF THE INHABITANTS
The only industry of which we can be certain is that still carried on by boat-people living near Tung Kwu, namely, fishing: yet there is little direct evidence of it in the finds. A rough stone ring collected by Professor Shellshear, and a stone axe blunted almost beyond recognition, with a notch on each side for attaching a rope or rattan, most likely used as a net sinker, and found loose on the surface of the isthmus during a visit by Professor Andersson, are the only direct traces. Yet if people ever lived on the island, this was almost the only resource open to them apart from the primitive 'slash and burn' cultivation indicated by the digging-stones. The food vessels left for the dead, the store jars, and the cooking stands they placed their hot round-bottomed caldrons on, indicate not only a settlement, probably shifting, but a cemetery. Tiled houses were no doubt a later development, going back no further than the Tang dynasty. The main interest of the relics found lies in the light they throw on the culture and life of the men who lived there before the coming of the colonists from the feudal principality of Yuet, and so before Chinese influence was strongly felt.*
* James Watt writes:
L
Since Mr. Schofield worked on this site, later excavations in China have confirmed that the whole class of stamped designs found on the soft pottery of Tung Kwu (Plates 7 & 8) is unmistakably derived from the decorative art of the Shang culture in the north. Similar, and some identical, designs are found on Shang pottery of all periods (including those from the recently discovered early Shang site at Erh-li-t'ou in north-western Honan). The pattern of raised studs set in the meshes of a rhombic lattice or a "compound lozenge" is also one of the chief decorations appearing on bronzes of the Anyang phase of Shang culture. Further evidence of Shang