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[[underline]] Chapter XIII. [[/underline]] 272.

that we wished to see.  By dint of perseverance, however, we generally succeeded in getting them to bring out, from dark nooks and crannies, boxes of what they regarded as mere scrap metal---rusty iron nails, broken brass buckles, bits of pewter, and the like.  Rummaging among these odds and ends usually resulted in our finding examples of what we were seeking---principally bronze daggers, knives, arrowheads, and a few objects that could hardly have been anything else than lance points.  These, the dealers assured us, had all been found in the vicinity, at one spot---the site of that battle between the Chinese and the Hsiung-nu just mentioned. [[strikethrough]] (see page 271). [[/strikethrough]]
We noted that bronze swords, battleaxes, spearheads, helmets, and stirrups [[superscript]] (244) [[/superscript]] were lacking; nor could we learn whether such were ever
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[[superscript]] (244) [[/superscript]] On stirrups in eastern Asian, [[underline]] cf. [[/underline]] pages 129 [[underline]] sq. [[/underline]]
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found at this site.  This is however of course merely negative evidence as to the armament of the time (probably toward the close of the 1st millennium B.C.) when the battle was fought.

[[underline]] Ordos Bronzes. [[/underline]]
Only part of the objects that we had thus found, we could see at a glance, were Chinese in origin.  The rest belonged to a distinct subdivision of the widespread "Scythic" or "Scytho-Siberian" family---the one characterized by that so-called "Animal style" of art so richly represented in certain Russian collections.
The specimens that we were now examining seemed most nearly related in type to those bronzes from Minussinsk, in the upper Yenisei basin of southern Siberia, already mentioned. [[strikethrough]] (see note 243, page 271). [[/strikethrough]] Specifically they belonged to the group known as "Ordos bronzes", so named from the region where they are found---the arid plateau area north of