Abstract: Chuandong prehistoric site found in 1978 is situated west about 4km of the city of Puding county, Guizhou Province. The first systematic excavation of the site was undertaken by the Museum of Guizhou Province and Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Academia Sinica in 1981.This paper mainly describes the results of the preliminary study of this excavation and discusses some problems of the site.
The cultural relics-bearing sediments were divided into 10 layers (unreaching bottom of the deposits). Abundant cultural relics which include over 3000 stone artifacts, about 500 specimens of the polished bone tools, some bone and antler artifacts, the plentiful remains of using fire (containing 4 "foyers", about 7000 pieces of burned broken bone and one ash layer), 30 pieces of human fossils, 13 species of mammalian fossils and more than 10000 pieces of mammalian bone fragments wcre found in situ.
1. Industrial characters
On the basis of the preliminary study of the remains from Chuandong prehistoric site excavated in 1981, some characters of the assemblage could be shown as follows:
(1) Flakes were produced by three methods: edge crushing, hammer percussion and bipolar technique. The former two are the main way for making flake and the last is very rare in our collections.
(2) The used flakes without trim are more common.
(3) The majority of these tools were retouched on the ventral surface of the flakes and are larger in size. The tools could be divided into three types: scrapers, pointed tools and choppers including a few chopping tools. They were so finely trimmed as with regular shape and sharp edge. Most of end scrapers have a sharp cutting edge which is different from the same type of other sites in China.
(4) The polished bone tools are subdivided into six types, such as spades, awls, needles, flat tool with a fork, no edge's slub and flat utensil latter similars to hairpin of Neolithic age in China. All bone tools were carefully manufactured with delicate shape.
2. Discussion of some problems
(1) The division of cultural pattern and stage The industry found in Chuandong prehistoric site could be subdivided into two patterns and two stages: the early one and late one. The differences on the relics of the early and late stages see table 1 in Chinese.
(2) The period of the site According to 14C dating, the early stage is about 16000ybp(L8) while the late stage is dated to be 8080±100ybp(L3), 8670±100ybp(L4), 8540±100ybp(LS) and 9600±100ybp(L6). Therefore, the early stage belongs to upper Pleistocene or late Paleolithic stage and the late stage is attributed to early Holocene or Mesolithic and even to early Neolithic in China. Owing to no existing of the characters of Mesolithic and early Neolithic culture, such as microlith, polished stone tools and ceramics in the assemblage, the industry of the late stage is called as Epi-Paleolithic one and its period is named as Epi-Paleolithic.
(3) Cultural relation and named problem Judging by the main characters of the assemblage from Chuandong prehistoric site, the artifacts of lower part is closely related to those from the upper part of Ma'anshan site of Tongzi county, Guizhou Province and Fulin site of Hanyuan county, Sichuan Province while relics of the upper part belong to Maomaodong Culture but there are some less important differences between the industries in Chuandong and Maomaodong prehistoric sites. We propose that the assemblage from upper part of Chuandong site should be called Chuandong cultural parttern of Maomaodong Culture.
As mentioned above, the important significance of the site has been clearly known and its scientific situation has also laid more solid foundation in prehistoric archeology of China.

Key words: Chuandong; Prehistoric site; Stone artifact; Polished bone tool; Two cultural patterns