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14.

at the ninth meter the deposit sharply turned north eastward and swept across the border in that direction. It proved however that this deposit was undercut by later intrusion, consisting of bricks and tiles as well as porcelainous fragments. The upper part showed all the traces of honest preservation. It has been suggested several times by one of the workmen that this was formerly the entrance to a Shang burial, which must have been robbed by well diggers in the adjacent area. All Shang tombs in this region according to him were found at water level. The upper part of this deposit yielded a number of pot fabrics which can be restored: one is a four-footed basin, while the other is made of moulded caly with the head of a sheep.
  Both the central and the northern rectangular depressions are less than one meter deep and both possess a flat bottom. The central one was covered by a great deal of burnt clay which at first led us to think that there must be fire place; immediately above this was the inscribed bone-beating stratum. The northern one showed nothing unusual.
  In the SH pit, there are also traces of regularity, but nothing definite could be made out. In the northern diggings, there are several vertical contacts between the cultural and the virgin soil, the meaning of which however is not yet clear. The southern diggings on the road is even more of a mess; the condition in which the artifacts were taken out required more care for observation but yielded less results. 
  The disturbances are mechanically divisible into three types (1) overcut, (2) complete removal of the cultural soil and (3) undercut. In each case the new occupant of the space may be entirely of new matters, or the old stuff turned over or a mixture of both. the quantitative variations in different parts are great; they all of course destroy the old stratification.