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8
and reliefs, showing Western influence, (probably Greek or
Roman.)

             Group III
             Unfamiliar type,--paintings, textiles, and
painted banners, suggestive in line, brush stroke, and color
o^[[f]] the work of the T'ang period, but containing other elements
which, for the moment^[[,]] we must define^[[,]] rather vaguely as
"Central Asian".
[[underlined]]CENTRAL ASIAN[[/underlined]]       Another point which struck me in con-
[[underlined]]EVIDENCE ON[[/underlined]]      sidering the Stein collection as a whole
[[underlined]]CHINESE CULTURE[[/underlined]]  was that Central Asia, from whence these
things were taken, must from this time on be considered not 
only as a field by itself with all its particular interests
of conflicting civilizations and of "trade-route" culture,
but as an almost unworked mine of material which will be
found to bear directly on the main civilizations of Mediaeval
and Modern China. Not only does the period of the Central
Asian finds appeal particularly to the Chinese arch^[[a]]eologist
and the student of Chinese art, as being contemporary with
the springs of art in China and with its Golden Age, but the
tangible finds have been in almost every case of such a
character as to shed light on the problems which have been
engaging our attention in connection with the territory a
thousand miles to the East. When the proposed American
School is founded, it must give particular attention from 
the very start to the possibilities which may arise from
further explorations in Turkestan, where the climatic con-
ditions and the nature of the soil are such as to have [[end page]]