This fragment of the rim of a stoneware bowl has a grey body and transparent, green glaze on either side. The incised decoration shows a combed pattern on the inside, and a plain band on the outside. Greenwares of this type were produced by the Huangbaozhen kilns in Yaozhou (now Tongchuan county), Shaanxi Province, northern China. This bowl was probably made during the Northern Song dynasty, 11th - 12th century AD, and may have reached the site of Ushak-tal, near Karashahr on the northern part of the Silk Road, through trade.

The Victoria and Albert Museum has more than 70 ceramic fragments and fragments of Buddhist sculptures, as well as around 600 ancient and medieval textiles recovered by Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943) during his second expedition (1906-8) into Chinese Central Asia, where he once again visited and excavated sites on the southern Silk Road, before moving eastwards to Dunhuang. At Dunhuang, he studied and excavated the Han-dynasty watchtowers to the north of the town, as well as the Mogao cave temples to the southeast, where he acquired material from the Library Cave. From there he moved on to the northern Silk Road, stopping briefly at Turfan sites but not carrying out any excavations. He made a perilous north-south crossing of the Taklamakan desert in order to hasten to Khotan where he excavated more ancient sites, before finishing off his expedition with surveying in the Kunlun Mountains.