Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island
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The position and size of this lump, the much rougher reverse face, the material, the bluntness of the "edge," the inequality of the bevels, all suggest that we have here some tool used in the preparation of other tools that were worked by polishing, sharpening or a cutting that was akin to polishing, something intimately related to the saws of our preceding article but of much softer material.
The next piece is of importance Plate 11, B because on the one hand it is just like a portion of the above specimen as far as general shape, section and condition are concerned; because, on the other hand, it was found in one of those group finds which seem to have always been together and which warrant us in supposing that thus we may argue to the piece's proper cultural context. This specimen was found along with the next piece and the sandstone polisher below G, a group of seven neolithic axes (some of them showing the most pronounced type of stepping that we have got, very good "Philippine" axes all of them but one showing at least some kind of faint stepping and four of them showing no signs of use), much pottery including two whole pots standing erect (one of them very like H.K.N. IV, Plate 15, No. 3 but larger and very similar to the An Yang piece (45) p. 58. Plate I: the other was like H.K.N. IV, Plate 15, No. 1 but had more marked splay of the sides ep. (5), Plate IV, Nos. 15, 19 (Han), a mouth less highly collared but with two pair of suspension holes, a dish-bottom making a sharp angle with the sides and which originally stood probably on a foot): the pottery was all of the quartz- corded type of real neolithic stuff (no "Double-F"): there were also two split but unworked pieces of stone, seemingly "blanks" for stone implements, though one may have been cut out with a saw from an older adze-tool. The seven axes were beautifully finished: they are the best we have got from Lamma for excellence of material and finish; hence the collocation would warn us against regarding the present specimens as protoncoliths the finding of the sandstone polisher or whet-stone and of the blanks point to this being a group of tools with some unused pieces. In this context, it is important to note the similarity of his find to the burial deposit in the undisturbed grave found by J. G. Andersson at Pien Chau Kou (Kansu; Yang Shao culture of the painted burial wares, probably about 2000 B.C.):-
:—two greenstone axes, two grindstones of light red sandstone and twelve burial urns of which four unpainted (rougher) and eight painted ("elegant, fine, pale brick-red ware"). It is probable that the rougher wares contained meat and drink there were fragments of a stag's skull in one and all four were at the dead man's head. may take it that the Lamma find was not a mortuary deposit for the usual character of the finds seems to point to actual habitation rather than to burial: however, even from this point of view,, the P.C.K. deposit suggests an imporant point of view, viz:-burial deposits embrace the important elements in the culture of the people, the articles deemed most necessary at some stage (if not the actual present) of their development: the Lamma find containing the very same species of objects might there- fore be taken as competely characteristic of the culture in its distinctive features (99), p. 274. And at Lamma there is also the close proximity of
July 1935.
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