![Transcription Center logo](/themes/custom/tc_theme/assets/image/logo.png)
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
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]]