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3.

The ditch serves as an outlet for such flood. We can readily observe that some human effort must have been applied in having the ditch just at the right place. The ditch is perhaps about as old as the village itself.

Elder men of the village all told us that no inscribed bones had ever been found west of the ditch line. We have reasons to believe that this is a well-experienced talk, but, at the same time, as we know the [[underline]]raison d'etre[[/underline]] of the ditch and, as inscribed bones are not the only artifacts of Yin-hsu, naturally we could not, on the basis of such tradition, take this ditch as a boundary line to limit our work. Thus in the beginning of this season, three shafts were run right in the middle of the three raised ground west of the ditch, testing the underground conditions thereof. The result of this digging made us feel that it is quite worthwhile to extend the excavation westward. Meanwhile, however, our work needed concentration, so it was dedided to discontinue it for the time being.

C. Excavations(Map     ).

The excavations of this season, except for the three trenches in the Northwest, was entirely concentrated north of the village, adjacent to the sand hill. The trenchings of the season are now tabulated below:

TABLE I
Trenchings of the fall season of 1929.
^[[(map VII of VIII)]]
Trenches  | Lengths | Widths | Depths  | Dates | REmarks
N.W.Ia.l. | 12.00 | 1.50 | 1.35-2.25 | 7-10/Oct. |
N.W.Ia.2. | 6.00 | 1.00 | 1.05-1.45 | 10-12/Oct. |