A NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE
111
Maglioni continued archaeological work further afield. After his death, Maglioni roughly outlined the area of their researches and designated it as the Han-Chu region, naming it this because it is bounded by the Han and Teng Rivers in the East and the Chu (or Pearl River) and Tung in the West.
Maglioni divided the neolithic era into three main periods, to each of which he assigned one of the cultures he found. SON was early neolithic, SAK was middle neolithic, and PAT was late neolithic.* All three names were taken from parts of the names of the villages nearest to the sites where the cultures were first discovered.
The stone artifacts that I have found are typical of the middle neolithic era, and they also closely resemble the SAK artifacts in the Maglioni collection. They differ strikingly from the PAT materials found in the Western part of the Colony. Unlike the latter, they are almost exclusively made of chert. They are also cruder and less sophisticated, with traces of chipping left in spite of the polishing, as if the chipping had been too deep. The cutting edge of the axes as well as the adzes is not bevelled as in the case of those from Lamma and Lantao. They are almost all longer in shape and narrower, not as thick in cross-section as the latter, and to my unpractised eye, they resemble more the stone artifacts displayed in the Hong Kong University Museum from Annam and Laos.
The most typical element of SAK culture is its pottery, which is a fine ware of smooth mix and is stamped with a variety of patterns, the most common one being a basket weave and others including a herring-bone and concentric circles. The pots are of a small size (perhaps because the SAK people were nomadic), globular in shape, with a shallow ring-like foot, which was added after the pots had been shaped and stamped. They were frequently decorated with an equatorial band in bas-relief as well as other bands above and below it. These bands were also added after the pot had been shaped and stamped. The SAK potters made great progress in both preparing and baking the clay. Maglioni says: "They utilized clays which received their bright colour when fired, added little or no sand, made very thin ware,
"PAT appears to have continued uninterruptedly from the stone age into historic times,
A NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE
111
Maglioni continued archaeological work further afield. After his death Maglioni roughly outlined the area of their researches and designated it as the Han-Chu region, naming it this because it is bounded by the Han and Teng Rivers in the East and the Chu (or Pearl River) and Tung in the West.
Maglioni divided the neolithic era into three main periods to each of which he assigned one of the cultures he found. SON was early neolithic, SAK was middle neolithic, and PAT was late neolithic.* All three names were taken from parts of the names of the villages nearest to the sites where the cultures were first discovered.
The stone artifacts that I have found are typical of the middle neolithic era, and they also closely resemble the SAK artifacts in the Maglioni collection. They differ strikingly from the PAT materials found in the Western part of the Colony. Unlike the latter they are almost exclusively made of chert. They are also cruder and less sophisticated, with traces of chipping left in spite of the polishing, as if the chipping had been too deep. The cutting edge of the axes as well as the adzes is not bevelled as in the case of those from Lamma and Lantao. They are almost all longer in shape and narrower, not as thick in cross-section as the latter, and to my unpractised eye, they resemble more the stone artifacts displayed in the Hong Kong University Museum from Annam and Laos.
The most typical element of SAK culture is its pottery, which is a fine ware of smooth mix and is stamped with a variety of patterns, the most common one being a basket weave and others including a herring-bone and concentric circles. The pots are of a small size (perhaps because the SAK people were nomadic), globular in shape, with shallow ring-like foot, which was added after the pots had been shaped and stamped. They were frequently decorated with an equatorial band in bas-relief as well as other bands above and below it. These bands were also added after the pot had been shaped and stamped. The SAK polters made great progress in both preparing and baking the clay. Maglioni says: "They utilized clays which received their bright colour when fired, added little or no sand, made very thin ware,
"PAT appears to have continued uninterruptedly from the stone age into historic times,
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.