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[[underline]] Chapter XVIII. [[/underline]] 381.

that entry into the pits was only through their tops lies in the fact that there were nowhere found on the site either pivotal door-stones or traces of lateral doorways, both usual in the modern loess cave-dwellings of northwestern China. [[superscript]] (339) [[/superscript]]
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[[superscript]] (339) [[/superscript]]    The modern loess cave-dwellings so common in northwestern China are almost invariably barrel-vaulted, and are entered by means of a door at the outer end, at the floor level.  Easily and cheaply constructed, they are cool in summer and warm in winter; but they are a source of no little danger in earthquakes, during which they often collapse and bury their occupants alive.
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     The interior surfaces of the pit-dwellings were usually well smoothed and appeared sometimes, though not invariably, to have been covered with a thick coating of lime plaster (pl.[[strikethrough]] CXLVV [[/strikethrough]] ^[[50, fig. 1).]] In nearly every case, after clearing out the material filling the interiors, the roughly flattened floors of the pits were found to be overlaid with a rather thin grayish layer, powdery when dry and apparently organic in character.  This deposit the excavators took as an indication that when the pit-dwellings were still in use, their floors had some sort of covering, perhaps of mats, sheets of bark, or simply rushes.  We must not, however, overlook the possibility that this gray layer may represent merely accumulations of refuse; for after prolonged occupation these pits, naturally almost impossible to clean, must have become filthy places.
    Where groups of such dwellings occurred on the site, there was no indication of a tendency to form mounds, such as often mark abandoned villages.  It must be remembered, however, that piles of debris do not normally gather over subterranean dwellings, as they do over actual buildings; since it is the ruins of the latter that form the principal element in the formation of such mounds.