Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island
123
sharpened. One is from Tai Wan G and was found with the axes and the rest as described above in the area C-D at 50-60 ins. It is of a reddish sandstone: the shape is typical even in large pieces of about 400 mm. in length: thicker and raw at one end, more pointed at the other: on larger specimens from Tai Wan (one very good one has been deposited with Professor Beyer in Manila) or from the S sites, five or six working facets are distributed very evenly around the stone leaving one untouched face to act as a bedding surface. Small pieces however seem to be used on all convenient surfaces. A peculiarity of all is the development of very narrow filets of polished surface between the wider faces. This specimen has one face hollowed in the typical manner, a second face that must have been used for some chisel-like tool, a third that has a deep groove in a surface also used for whetting: the fourth face has only the beginning of a groove. In addition there are two thin filets on the angles between the faces and they seem to have been made by a sharpening action at right angles to the long axis, as if the stone was held in the hand and then rubbed over an object with a side-to-side movement of the hand. Plate II G.
W
54
H
3. cms.
H. A sharpening-stone from HSY. It shows the tracks of implements deeply cut: the uppermost track I. is in a plane intersecting that of the other grooves.
The section does
not show clearly enough the pre- sence of marked wider polishing surfaces on the back.
A
5. cms.
Stone adapted to hand-axe use by a few rough flakings. See text for interesting context of find.
The other piece H is from HSY and is selected for the deep grooves (three very marked and two weaker ones) in a rock that is much more compact (metamorphosed) than the first.
Such implements turn up on most of the sites, Tai Wan has given us very neat thin hone-shaped pieces quite close to pieces of bronze. Very small pieces occur, about 20 mm. in greatest dimension but also large heavy pieces up to about half a metre.
A special type of polisher has been recognized at Lamma and S sites. It resembles the skittle used in bowls, having a cylindrical part to act as a handle and a very thin head which was obviously used to smoothen the inner circumference of some ring-shaped article.
July 1935.