关键词: 三峡地区;冉家路口遗址;旧石器时代中期;石制品

Abstract: The Ranjialukou site (29°55′14″N, 107°44′45″E) is situated at Fengdu County, Three Gorges Region of South China, it was discovered in 1994 and excavated in 2001. The site was buried in the third terrace of the Yangtze River.The sediment can be delaminated into two parts: the upper part is fine sands, and the lower part is gravel. All the stone artifacts were buried in the lower part. The abrasion on the stone artifacts' surface indicated that they had been carried for a short distance.
A total of 680 pieces of stone artifacts were unearthed from the site.These include retouched tools (87), cores (207), flakes (336) and chunks (50). The raw materials exploited at the site were all pebbles selected from the ancient riverbeds. More than 80 percent of the raw materials were silicarenite.
The main flaking technique at the site is direct hammer percussion without core preparation. Most cores are single-platform ones with cortical surfaces and most of the flakes have cortical surface on the back. Cores were flaked simply and casually, indicating low extent of consumption.
The retouched tools include choppers, scrapers, notches, picks, cleavers, biface and stone ball. Choppers and scrapers are the dominatve tool types. More than 81 percent of the implements are flake tools, the others were mainly made from pebbles. Simple unifacial retouch is the main means of tools modification. Several implements were retouched by alternating retouch or bifacial retouch.
The stone tool assemblage of Ranjialukou site shows close tie with the Pebble Tool Industry in South China, but it has its own characters such as that most of the implements were made from flake blanks. Optically stimulated lumininescene dating on sand samples from the artifact-bearing layer yielded an age of 142.9 ±11.6Ka, which place the Ranjialukou industry to the Middle Paleolithic in China.

Key words: Paleolithic; Late Middle Pleistocene; Ranjialukou; Three Gorges Region