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ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS ON LAMMA ISLAND
(H) NEAR HONG KONG.
PART IX.
By D. J. FINN, S.J.
What has already been published by Professor Shellshear (24) and in the H.K.N. series of articles is enough to give an adequate idea of the prehistorical material found around Hong Kong in general and on Lamma in particular. The Naturalist series so far has kept within the Neolithic and Bronze Age aspects of the Lamma finds, because these are the prevailing features there and it was actually a long time before the presence of older types was noted. Professor Shellshear and Dr. Heanley had come to recognise the existence of such elements in their surface finds elsewhere and these were published in the Hanoi paper (24) p. 67, Plates VII, VIII (5, 6). In rounding off by this publication the important features of the Lamma finds, I wish to keep mostly to the Tai Wan and HSY material and to treat this peculiar "epimiolithic" evidence merely in an introductory fashion: it is of great importance and a proper discussion of it is hardly possible as yet and would in any case involve the illustration of other sites and material: I hope to describe later some other sites in quick survey and then the question will come up again. After this present part, we shall be concerned with Tai Wan mainly only by way of amplification or special detail.
The material to be described here does not admit of as much illustration by parallels from other sites outside the Hong Kong area as did the bulk of the things already treated above; it consists, first, of some objects whose use and even fabrication are obscure-they are perhaps fabricators themselves :- secondly, of the types of polishing stones (briefly indicated, for the material is very rich and hard to publish): thirdly, of the "epimioliths" and finally of some implements very significant for the character of the Lamma culture (spindle-whorls and fish-hook).
STONE-WORKING IMPLEMENTS (POLISHERS)?
This is the type of thing illustrated in Plate 11. The specimens come from Tai Wan except for the piece E which seems obviously to be a piece in readiness to make an article of the type, Plate 11 D: this “blank" comes from HSY (picked up loose). Material and finish (if one can so describe what seems rather to be smoothened surfaces consequent on use) suggest that these objects belong to the type of tools used by workers in stone, analogous to the saws (or files) published in H.K.N. VI, p. 59, Plate 6. The material of these as far we know them is softer than that of the saws: it is of the ash, shale or softer sandstone kind.
The first piece Plate 11, A was found at 27ins. resting on top of a short pestle-like stone: this latter kind of thing has turned up frequently on our sites here and seems to have been either a percussion implement or a whet-stone (usually the ends show signs of hammering, often with big fractures, but the sides sometimes seem polished): the collocation looks like that of tools such as we shall have to note below for other specimens. This piece is of a greyish-blue. The shape is roughly like that of the saws
July 1935.
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