[
    {
        "id": 204505,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1962",
        "page_number": 137,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "122\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nQUERIES\n\nPRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE FINDS AT SHEK PIK\n\nAt the beginning of March 1962 a bulldozer employed by Messrs. Dragages on the reservoir site at Shek Pik, south-west Lantau, uncovered coins and pottery on the hillside above the abandoned village of Shek Pik Wai. Unfortunately, the find was not reported by the Company and it was only after a member of the Chief Resident Engineer's staff got to hear of it that steps were taken to recover as much as possible from the workmen.\n\nSome three hundred coins and several small sherds of pottery and porcelain were handed in to the Waterworks Office by the Chief Resident Engineer, Shek Pik and these were sent to the Curator of the City Hall Museum, Mr. J. M. Warner, who passed them to me for a preliminary examination.\n\nOn Sunday, 11th March, members of the Archaeological Team of the University went out to Shek Pik and spent the better part of a day looking round the area which had been cleared by the bulldozers. We managed to recover over a hundred more coins and, which was possibly of greater importance, picked up fragments of porcelain from the site.\n\nThe coins have now been given a preliminary classification in the District Office, Islands. Fortunately, despite their long burial, the characters on most of the coins are still decipherable and it has been possible in all but a few cases to determine to which reign dates they should be assigned. They appear to be copper coins and with the exception of two small groups, have reign titles in the Sung Dynasty (960-1278). Of the sixty reign titles of the eighteen emperors of this dynasty, both Northern and Southern Sung, twenty-nine are represented among the coins which have already been recovered. There is also a group of coins which bear the characters Wang Sung, Shêng Sung, and Ta Sung. These appeared along with coins bearing a reign title, and can also be fixed accurately in time, in these cases 1038-40, 1101 and 1226 respectively. The date of the coins covers the whole length of the Sung period, that is approximately three hundred years from the mid-tenth to the late thirteenth centuries. Besides Sung coins there is a small",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 204506,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1962",
        "page_number": 138,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n123\n\ngroup belonging to the K'ai Yuan period of the Tang Dynasty (713-742), and a few other coins from the Tai P'ing period of the Liao Dynasty (Tartars) which date from 1020-1031. A find of T'ang coins in conjunction with Sung coins shows that the former were in circulation in late Sung times.\n\nUnfortunately, as I hinted at the beginning of this note, there is no doubt that the delay in reporting this find has led to the loss of the greater part of both coins and porcelain. To give a known instance, it was reported from Macau, after a newspaper man there had seen the official press release which appeared in the Hong Kong papers, that over 1,000 coins had been bought recently from Hong Kong by a curio merchant. There is little doubt that these coins also came from Shek Pik, since it was reported that the coins were all of the Sung Dynasty and were covered with earth, which showed that they had been recently excavated. Many other coins must also be in the possession of workmen on the site or in the hands of people to whom they have sold them. An attempt has been made to recover these by means of a letter to the Chief Resident Engineer, but there has been no response so far to the appeal, despite his ready assistance.\n\nThe same is true of the porcelain, of which there appears to have been some quantity. Not surprisingly, the bulldozers smashed the porcelain to pieces and scattered it over a wide area. Some of the broken pieces are in the hands of persons at Shek Pik; others are still buried under the earth moved by the bulldozers, which extends over several acres of hillside; and about a hundred small fragments were recovered by the Team from Shek Pik. Portions of about twenty pieces of porcelain have been recovered to date; very small for the most part but enough to show by colour and shape that they were part of different pots. These fragments are characterised by their fine colour, good shape and the thickness and brilliance of the glaze.\n\nTo which period can the find be attributed? The last reign date recovered so far is of the period 1241-1253, which brings us to within twenty-five years of the fall of the dynasty. In the normal course of events it would, I think, be unlikely for porcelain of this quality to be found on Lantau which, so far as we know, was at this time barely inhabited by a handful of Chinese peasants",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
        "rank": 0
    }
]