Abstract: The Wanshouyan Hill, a Paleolithic site complex, is situated 17 km northwest of Sanming City, Fujian Province. Excavations were conducted at two sites on the hill, namely the Lingfengdong Cave and the Chuanfandong Cave in 1999-2000 and again in 2004. More than one hundred artifacts and 11 species of mammalian fossils were unearthed from the upper travertine in Lingfengdong Cave, and two cultural layers were identified at the Chuanfandong Cave. Each cultural layer contains a large amount of stone artifacts and mammalian fossils.
This paper is a preliminary report on the taphonomy of the site complex based on the information collected during the second excavation in 2004. We suggest that for the Lingfengdong site, artifacts and mammalian fossils had been weathered for a long period of time, as the surface of most bones had been gnawed by rodents. For the Chuanfandong Cave, pebbles of the artificial pebblepaved ground and bones in the lower cultural layer were corroded by iron, manganese and various humus.The cultural and fossil remains in the Lingfengdong Cave and Chuanfandong Cave were probably buried in situ as no disturbance could be identified.
In the No
3 tunnel of the eastern part of the Chuanfandong Cave, a large number of fossil teeth and mammalian bones were unearthed from greenishgray sandy clay and olive yellow sticky clay. The fauna was named “the Wanshouyan fauna” and most of them were members of the “Airulopoda Stegodon Fauna”in South China.Analysis of the sediments indicates that the mammalian fossils in the No. 3 tunnel of the Chuanfandong were washed from the Longjingdong. This fauna assemblage, together with the evidence of pollen, suggests that the environment then was tropicalsubtropical warm moisture foresttussock condition.

Key words: Wanshouyan; Paleolithic site; Artifacts; Fauna; Taphonomy