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[[underline]] Chapter XIII. [[/underline]] 265.

belonged, as we [[strikethrough]] had been [[/strikethrough]] ^[[were]] beginning to suspect, to the Yang Shao ceramic tradition.  Secondly, even though we did not actually find them [[underline]] in situ [[/underline]], yet both the painted shards and the stone knife must have been picked up, probably by children, somewhere in the immediate vicinity.  They therefore formed clear and indisputable evidence that the Chinese Late Neolithic "Painted Pottery" culture, possibly in a slightly variant form, had extended at least thus far north. [[superscript]] (237) [[/superscript]] The P'ing Ch'êng region lies more-
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[[superscript]] (237) [[/superscript]] The type-site of Yang Shao lies a short distance south of the Yellow River, some 400 miles nearly due south of Ta T'ung Hsien.
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over, as already noted^[[,]] [[strikethrough]] (page 229), [[/strikethrough]] at the intersection of two ancient routes of migration and travel; and it is only on or close to such, apparently, that the "Painted Pottery" occurs.  In less accessible areas, as in hilly country, up lateral valleys, or on the higher and therefore older river-terraces, it seems to be absent, the only ware found in such places being of the old coarse gray-brown variety.
  We also dug a trial-pit in an old and well-compacted refuse-heap, partly washed away by floods, on the east o^[[r]] left bank of the Yü Ho.  It lay slightly upstream from the old North Wei capital, with which, however, it seemed most probably coeval.  In it we unearthed quantities of potsherds, apparently descended from the old coarse gray ware but decidedly more sophisticated in both appearance and manufacture; for they were not only thinner and comprised a greater variety of forms, but they were clearly wheelmade.  We found also bones of (presumably domestic) sheep and swine; a broken fragment of worked antler, bearing tool-marks; and a badly rusted portion, about 15 [[underline]] cm. [[/underline]] long, of an iron sword-blade, single-edged, and still encased in a much decayed section of its wooden scabbard.
  On the site of the ancient city itself, on this occasion, Mr Wang Pai-yen, Mr. Wenley's Chinese teacher, picked up a broken piece of sculp-