Abstract: This report presents the preliminary result of a Palaeolithic survey in Huailai basin, Hebei Province conducted by the Institute of Nihewan Archaeology of Hebei Normal University and the Huailai Museum. A total of 10 Palaeolithic localities, mainly locating along the southwest bank of Guanting reservoir, were newly discovered and confirmed, and more than 20 stone artifacts and a few mammalian fossils were collected. Based on the technological and typological characteristics of these stone artifacts, two different groups of lithic artifacts have been identified, one is a flake-tool based assemblage characterized by simple cores, flakes, lightly-retouched tools etc.; the other is a microblade assemblage characterized by wedge-shaped microblade cores. Dominated by volcanic rocks, raw materials for stone knapping were mainly collected as pebbles from nearby riverbeds. The principal flaking and retouching technique was direct hard hammer percussion, while soft hammer had probably also been used when modifying bifacial preforms of wedge-shaped microblade cores. The Palaeolithic remains are mainly buried in the second and third terraces of both banks of the Yongding River. It could be inferred from the geomorphological and stratigraphic comparisons in the drainage basin of the Yongding River valley that the newly discovered localities may be dated to the Middle and Late Pleistocene, and the date of microlithic materials is more likely the end of the Late Pleistocene based on the comparison with the similar finds in the Nihewan basin.

Key words: Palaeolithic survey; Stone artifacts; Yongding River; Huailai Basin