Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island
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We
But the specimen in figure K has a more puzzling context and condition. It comes from Tai Wan, from a section not counted in the 1933 excavation. It is from a kind of pocket amid rocks to the east of the clump of vegetation and the (sacred) tree which stands on the rocky knoll. The ground there is no longer the pure sliding sands of the main site but beneath the humus is lightly cemented together with minerals brought down by moisture from the upper layers. The sandy mass is about five feet deep over the rocks in this, one day when I visited the site with Mr. Schofield and Drs. Brock and Lees the geologists, I found by my own digging a most interesting collection of objects. These may be set forth here quickly, for the whole group is in the nature of a test case on which we have fortunately some of the best judgments that the scientific world may give on certain points. The section was about five feet wide with a face standing firm and clean about six feet measured down from the surface: at about five feet heavy boulders began: above that it was a sand con- creted slightly with lime: the levels here as distinct from the rest of the Tai Wan site admit of much wash-down from the background. found "Double-F" pottery at 40 ins. as described in H.K.N. III, p. 245. Related ware of I.d. ii type at 49 ins. (cp. ib. pp. 232, 245). The "Chou" type of ware (white rough developed from corded ware with bronze in- fluence on pattern), illustrated in H.K.N. IV, Plate XIV, No. 6, p. 64: this was at about 50 ins. At the same level and quite close, four pieces of bronze of uncertain use, very corroded so that they were cracked as if made of perished leather: Mr. Simpson suggests that one piece with a curved point (like the nail-extractor on the old-fashioned Sheffield com- bination pocket-knives or, the Chinese so-called "knot-openers") may be a tool for trimming a clay mould before casting bronze: two pieces might possibly be bits of a runner from a mould: the other two are of about the thickness of an ordinary pencil but almost square in section: one surface is very flat being probably the top level of the liquid metal: they seem originally to have made one stick about 80 mm. in length of which the curved tip comes to a scraping edge. Close by these was a bronze coin of the usual cash type, obviously of an old date: it is sɔ worn that it is not worth reproducing: the British Museum Coin Room to whom it was submitted gave as their opinion of its date:-"PROBABLY c. I CENTURY A.D." The coin was not contained in any object and thus we have the alternative of dating the rest by the contiguity of the coin (later than the coin?) or else of regarding the coin as a later intruder: the second solution is suggested by quite modern coins which here and there were found well below the surface in other parts of the site. Further, close to the bronzes were two pottery "beads" P or, more probably, spindle whorls these are of rough pottery with a vague design of small holes arranged in horizontal zones: one end (polar) of each specimen has been cut into, in one case seemingly by a regular curved object. These things look very primitive, but Professor Beyer has found pieces of very similar type in one of his Early Iron Age sites on Luzon. A neighbouring part of Tai Wan gave very much better finished specimens of the same kind of object (but without decoration) from a corresponding level (about 4 feet).
July 1935.
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