Abstract: Localities 3, 4 and 5, which are distributed along the southwest margin of the Shuidonggou basin, are the important localities of the Shuidonggou site. These three localities originally discovered in 1923 were excavated from August to October 2004, as part of a salvage archaeological operation due to the construction of a diversion channel for the Ningdong Heavy Chemical Base. These excavations exposed an area of about 110 m2, with more than 1000 stone artifacts and ostrich egg fragments.
The upper cultural layer and surface lithic assemblage includes a total of 928 pieces (479 from surface and 347 from Layer 1of Locality 4; 102 from the upper layer and surface of Localities 3, 5). More than 30 % of the artifacts are blades and there is a high percentage of chert. Preliminary technological analysis of retouched tools plus analysis of the stage of fossilization of ostrich egg fragments (including age of extinction for the ostrich in this region) indicate that the lithic assemblages from localities3, 4 and 5 is dated from the end Upper Paleolithic to the early Lower Neolithic.
The lower cultural layer lithic assemblage includes about 85 pieces that were excavated from Layer 6 at the three localities. Analysis of the type, morphology and technique of stone artifacts indicates that this layer seems to be more primitive in its cultural features than the upper cultural layer. Approximately 6115 % of the raw materials were dolomite, an observation that shows similarities to the Shuidonggou cultural layer of the Upper Paleolithic in North China. Cores, flakes, blade and bifacally retouched tools are the main classes. There are no typical microliths or Levallois2style cores. The principal manufacturing technique is direct hammer percussion with common core preparation. Bipolar and soft2hammer percussion are used here.
Stratigraphic comparison of the three localities with localities 1 and 7 at Shuidonggou have yielded an age earlier than found at cultural layer 8 as well as similarities to the cultural layer of Locality 7, therefore placing the lower cultural layers of the three localities to the late Upper Pleistocene.
Therefore, it can be concluded that the stone tool assemblages of the lower cultural layer shows a close affinity with Shuidonggou 1 Upper Paleolithic cultural characters, whereas the lithic industry from the upper layer and collectors ( include many microliths) indicates a close relationship with Shuidonggou 6 localities. Bifacial artifacts were a new discovery at the Shuidonggou site. The newly discovered cultural remains enrich the research context of the Shuidonggou site, but are also of great significance in the study of the cultural relationship between the Shuidonggou site and adjacent areas in North China.

Key words: Upper Paleolithic; Blade tradition; Microliths; Shuidonggou site