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2.

  So in discussing the nature of the deposit of this site, I am depending entirely on the observations of this season in these three localities, which are to be respectively called, the South, the Central and the North Digging(Maps 1-2).

  The underground conditions show a great deal of disturbances. The causes responsible for such disturbances are complicated. It is part of our work to disentangle such causes, so that a right understanding of the nature of the deposit may be reached. The inhabitants of the village, which was found as early back as the Ming Dynasty, have built houses, dug wells, cultivated trees and buried their dead on this very spot for more than three hundred years. They have, moreover, levelled ground where it is uneven, and accumulated debris where the land is low. It was when tilling the land that the first inscribed bones were brought out of the hidden [[crossed out]] plac [[/crossed out]] place exactly thirty years ago. These blind digging have laid open a great deal of these hidden documents and attracted the attention of antiquarians all over the world. But it is by no means unfair to say that more have been destroyed than saved. Up to the present time nobody learned much about the associated finds of the inscribed bones; whatever is known can not be stated with certainty. Besides it is also the most important cause responsible for the underground disturbed condition.

  The history of the disturbance of the site goes much further back than the beginning of the modern village. Between the abandonment of the site and the first settlement of the modern village, there is an interval of approximately twenty seven hundred years. What happened to this place during this long interval? On the basis of the observation of this season the question can be answered only partly. It can be definitely stated, that between the sixth and the ninth century, this place must have been used as a public cemetery. This is proved by the fact that in our limited digging of this season, at least five burials can be dated to the Sui-T'ang Dynasties or earlier. In the time preceding and following this period, this place must have been frequently overflooded by the Huan River. Fine sand, pebbles and even large boulders are all marks left by such overflow.