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124
D. J. FINN, S.J.
From HSY and Aberdeen and Stanley, we have pieces which seem to be stones for grinding meal: they are usually of granitic types of stone and are characterized by the usual hollow.
M
x
N
5. cms.
5. cms.
a
M. "Epimiolith" with
"bent" (apparently a sought-for form).
point
N. "Epimiolith" from HSY: an excellent specimen of an implement in the Old Stone Age tradition (even Chalossian- but most likely to be referred rather to Asturian types): found close to neolithic axes and pottery (see text).
EPIMIOLITHS.
We now come to the most interesting (archæologically) finds of all: but we can as yet say but little about them by way of explanation of context, use and culture. We find them on all our Hong Kong sites (or rather on the ones I personally know-they occur also on many of those known to my colleagues in this study). On the Lamma sites, at Aberdeen, Stanley and one other site, I have found them in the ground where the rougher corded ware was plentiful or characteristically present.
It must here be noted that “Double-F” is rare outside Lamma. Aberdeen yielded one piece of an older type of the D--F. ware with some fragments of another ware that is found typically at HSY: Stanley only one small fragment of a ware cognate to the "Double-F." In one case below, figure I, the "epimiolith" was found with a neatly packed group of half a dozen clam shells and a piece of deer-antler and all amid a group of pottery, the objects seemingly having been originally inside a black pot of the gritty quartz-tempered corded type. This find was made before the excavations of 1933.
However, every place which has yielded these implements has also given rough types of pottery, usually the black and the red corded wares showing much quartz in the paste. This is especially true of a Stanley site where on a low hill well out of reach of any wave disturbance a thin layer of humus, about one foot deep over the natural mantle of de- composed rock, still contains this type of pottery while, lower down at the base of the hill, evidently weathered out and carried down by erosion in typical fresh water gravel, some very good "epimioliths" were found. Thus they would belong to a period using already pottery of the usual neolithic type: on the same hill (both on the top and at the base), ncolithic polished stone adzes (stepped and rectangular) were found.
The Hong Kong Naturalist.