A Time of Great Change: Sha Po during the Ming–Colonial Era

The final chronological discussion in Chapter 7 addresses the Ming and Qing dynasties, which at Sha Po could not be more different in that the former is virtually absent, whereas archaeological remains from the latter period are abundant and provide fascinating insights into the lives of local people. Moreover, those material remains can also be interpreted with reference to a particularly rich historical and anthropological resource resulting from documentary research and interviews with village elders between the 1950s and 1980s. Recent historical research is a rapidly expanding field in archaeology, but sadly neglected in Hong Kong, and this chapter attempts to highlight its potential for the creation of more humanistic narratives and detailed interpretations than are possible in earlier periods.

Reconstructing Sha Po’s Landscapes and Lifeways

In Chapter 8 all the strands of evidence are drawn together within an overarching synthetic analysis of patterns of human activity through time, which are then interpreted in terms of the development, use, and past experience of Sha Po’s multi-period cultural landscape. The shifting patterns of human activity during the 6,500-year span of the study also permit the changing backbeach landform to be modelled as it expanded westward through time. Social landscape reconstructions, aided by artist’s impression drawings, focus in particular on activities evidenced during the Bronze Age, Six-Dynasties-Tang period, and Qing to early twentieth century.

On the Edge of Empire: Han–Yuan Sha Po

Chapter 6 explores the contrasting evidence for activity spanning the Han, Six Dynasties–Tang, and Song–Yuan periods at Sha Po. The study of structural remains and artefactual evidence associated with Sha Po’s Six Dynasties–Tang kiln-based coastal industry is supported by the results of a programme of thermoluminescence dating of kiln remains. Collectively, the evidence suggests that Sha Po was a planned and imperially controlled kiln complex directed towards the production of salt, with lime as a process-related by-product. In a pattern typical across Hong Kong, the industry’s post-abandonment phase is associated with Northern Song and some Southern Song–Yuan ceramics.

Social Landscapes and Ancient Environments

Chapter 3 begins by exploring the making of Hong Kong’s present cultural landscape and then works back through its earlier forms, firstly into the age of rice farming where the long-term sustainable management of that particular socio-economic lifeway created highly distinctive cultural landscapes stretching back from the Qing dynasty to as early as the Northern Song in some areas. Then from the Tang dynasty moving backwards, we enter an era where, on the face of it, human impacts beyond the intensively industrialised backbeach areas seem to have been relatively slight. That said, the coastal focus seemingly exhibited by early historical populations was even more intensively expressed in prehistory when, once sea-levels had stabilised at more or less their present position, the resource-rich landscape of the New Territories and Pearl River estuary coastline and offshore archipelagos then took shape.

Bronze Age: Technology, Trade, and Increasing Social Complexity

Chapter 5 examines one of Sha Po’s most fascinating and important periods of cultural development, the Bronze Age, a period during which the local community was making wider and more specialised use of the coastal landscape. On the plateau there was some form of stilt-house settlement associated with the specialised manufacture of fine quartz rings, while on the backbeach we have the region’s best evidence for non-ferrous metallurgy in the form of in situ bronze casting. The evidence for craft specialisation tells us that society was undergoing change and could perhaps support the work of artisans through some form of surplus production of food. Moreover, access to more advanced technology and exotic materials are both indications of a widening of external contacts, trade, and exchange, while a heightened interest in personal ornamentation and display points towards greater competition and the emergence of social hierarchies.

Sha Po’s First People: Neolithic Fisher-Hunter-Foragers

This chapter begins the chronological journey through Sha Po’s human story in the earlier Middle Neolithic, providing the necessary archaeological background and context by referencing discoveries made across the wider Hong Kong–Pearl River Delta region (a format also employed in Chapters 5–7 inclusive). The backbeach evidences a major break in activity until the Later Neolithic and we suggest that the patterning of activities is suggestive of a relatively low intensity usage of the site by a small-scale community of fisher-hunter-foragers. Artefactual evidence is also used to suggest that by the end of the Neolithic the Sha Po community, like others across the region, was exhibiting features attributable to a rise in social complexity, which probably reflected both internal change and the intensification of contacts with agropastoralist groups to the north of the Pearl River Delta.

Conclusions and Reflections on Sha Po

The main text is rounded off with a series of conclusions, which reflect on the value and significance of Sha Po’s archaeological resource in a local and regional context. Some reflections on lessons learnt during the research that led to the production of the book are then provided. Lastly, a series of recommendations and predictions concerning the future management of the Sha Po sites and their wider landscape are made.

How We Know about Ancient Sha Po

This chapter charts the twists and turns of Sha Po’s ‘site biography’, or how over a period of eight decades our present understanding of its archaeological treasures gradually came to light. It is a story that reflects Hong Kong archaeology as a whole, in that there were the discoveries made by pre-war pioneers, significant contributions by the Hong Kong Archaeological Society and the Antiquities and Monuments Office (AMO) and, most recently, a series of important finds made by archaeologists working in the commercial sector. During that story of discovery, fieldwork progressed from poorly recorded ‘antiquarian collecting’, through more formalised research digging, into the present era of AMO-licensed excavations working to agreed research designs.

Sha Po Tsuen: Hong Kong Archaeology in Microcosm

We begin by introducing the modern landscape setting of the Yung Shue Wan Site of Archaeological Interest on Lamma Island and the Sha Po backbeach and plateau sites within it. The present cultural context of the area is contrasted with its multi-period human past as evidenced by the excavated archaeological remains. The area’s social and environmental background is introduced. Then the site’s importance is highlighted in terms of key discoveries in the Bronze Age and Six Dynasties-Tang periods, as well as through the richer social narratives offered by recent historical archaeology. The chapter is rounded off with a chapter-by-chapter summary of the process by which the authors approached the task of ‘Piecing Together Sha Po’.