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[[/underline]] Chapter XVII. [[/underline]]  359.

mule-cart to inspect the excavation itself.  Our way led across a level cultivated plain bordered on the south (our right) by low bare hills and studded with grave-mounds, dilapidated monuments of brick and stone, and other relics of former times.  After we had proceeded eastward for a dozen miles or so, we reached the little walled town of Hsia Hsien, whose magistrate told us where we would find Dr. Li and Mr. Yüan, near the village of Hsi Yin Ts'un, some 7 miles farther to the northeast.  
  We located our friends without difficulty, and they conducted us over the site, near the edge of a level valley at the foot of a low loess bluff, and explained it to us.  It was that of a rather extensive prehistoric village which must have covered several acres.  Dr. Li and Mr. Yüan had however restricted their efforts only to a small portion of it, which they were excavating intensively.  To anticipate a little, after our visit [[strikethrough]] , [[/strikethrough]] they continued working until the advent of cold weather put a stop to their operations.  On the whole the results which they obtained were rather disappointing; for though they found embedded in the soil innumerable potsherds, they did not discover a single unbroken pot, and but little in the way of stone or bone artifacts or human skeletal material.
  It was noteworthy that they found no indication of the occurrence at this site of the [[/underline]] li [[/underline]] tripod, elsewhere so common in prehistoric northern China.  Among the artifacts were several bone needles, and also a grooved stone object of somewhat irregular shape, which they interpreted as a hammer.  Later on, at the "Painted Pottery" site of Wa Cha Hsieh ^[[(]]see page 391) we unearthed not a few similar objects, which however we thought more likely to have been net-sinkers, particularly as the same deposits yielded fishbones.
  Dr. Li and Mr. Yüan likewise found the half (only) of a small cocoon, apparently that of the silkworm.  This they believed to have occurred [[underlined]] in [[/underlined]]