Abstract: The Liuhuaishan Paleolithic site, located on the fourth terrace of the right bank of the Youjiang River, is found near the Jiangfeng village, Youjiang District, Baise City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The site was excavated from October 1 to November 8, 2005, as a salvage archeological project because of the anticipated construction of the Nanning2Baise Expressway. The excavations exposed an area of about 1 000 m2 .
Four stratigraphic layers were identified at the site, with a total thickness of more than 11 m. Archaeological materials were mainly unearthed from the 2nd and 3rd layer, two layers of latosols and reticular mottled brick2red clay, 510m —610m in thickness and positioned some 55m—60m above the Youjiang water level. A total of 136 stone artifacts and 37 manuble pebbles were unearthed.
The stone assemblage includes cores (N = 45), flakes (23) , chunks (52) and retouched tools (16) . The general features of these artifacts are summarized as follows :
1) Lithic raw materials exploited at the site were locally available from ancient riverbeds. More than four kinds of raw materials (silicarenite, quartzite, siltstone and breccia) were utilized in core reduction and tool manufacture , with silicarenite the predominant type.
2) The principal flaking technique is direct hammer percussion without core preparation.
3) Most stone artifacts (9017 %) are large and medium in size.
4) Blanks for tool fabrication are pebbles. Most tools are large in size.
5) Only two retouched tool classes are identified, namely choppers and picks.
6) Modified tools appear to be retouched by direct hammer percussion, mostly unificially retouched on the one end of the pebbles.
This paper is currently the only formal report on any excavated Paleolithic site in the Baise Basin, which contains more than 70 Paleolithic sites. The stone tool assemblage of the Liuhuaishan site shows close associations with the Pebble Tool Industry (Main Industry) in South China. Geomorphological and chronological comparison with other sites of the Baise Basin indicates that the age of the site should be close to the early Middle Pleistocene , which places the Liuhuaishan industry in the Lower Paleolithic in China.

Key words: Early Middle Pleistocene; Stone artifacts; Liuhuaishan; Baise Basin