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[[underline]] Chapter XVIII. [[/underline]] 392.^[[-a.]] at Wa Cha Hsieh would tend to confirm a somewhat late dating for the "Painted Pottery" period in northern China. On this see pp. 401 [[underline]] sq. [[/underline]], below. ------------------ proximal ends in both the stone and the bone forms terminated as a rule in a short tang, doubtless for insertion in a hollow shaft (or perhaps fore-shaft) of bamboo or reed. A few arrowpoints of shell (apparently that of the freshwater mussel), similar in a general way to the ones in stone, also occurred. [[underline]] Spearheads. [[/underline]] Scarcely anything among the implements, of whatever material, found at Wa Cha Hsieh could be interpreted as the head of a javelin, spear, or harpoon. Piercing instruments of these classes seem indeed to have been little if at all used by the Neolithic northern Chinese. [[underline]] Stone Knives. [[/underline]] Mr. Tung and his associates found, however, very many rectangular and semilunar stone knives, usually with one or two circular perforations, probably for lashing some sort of protective covering or padding to their backs (pl. 62, fig. 1, and [[underline]] cf. [[/underline]] text-fig. 58, right---the latter drawn from photographs of objects purchased in western Honan sometime prior to 1919 by the late Mr. Peter J. Bahr and now in the Field Museum at Chicago). These perforations had in all cases been drilled from both sides of the artifacts, as was clear from their biconical, "hourglass shaped" forms, which seemed to indicate a somewhat primitive stage in stone-working. [[superscript]] (346-a) [[/superscript]] ------------------ [[superscript]] (346-a) [[/superscript]] The same method of drilling, from opposite sides of an artifact, survived down to much later times in China; it appears there, for instance, in the (presumably ceremonial, not functional) jade objects of early historical times. ----------------------- These stone knives, of both shapes (the two seeming to shade into each other imperceptibly), averaged about 11 [[underline]] cm. [[/underline]] in length by 6 [[underline]] cm. [[/underline]] in width. Their occurrence was of some significance as affording additional
