Abstract:

Danjingkou reservoir is the source of water for the Middle Route Project of the South to-North Water Diversion in China. Liangjiagang locality 2 and Donggang Paleolithic site are located on the 3^rd terrace of left bank of Danjiang River, originally discovered in 1994 and excavated in 2009. The excavation was conducted in an area of 1425 m²where 193 stone artifacts were found. The typology and technological analyses of these stone artifacts reveal that: 1) Lithic raw materials exploited at the two sites were locally available from ancient river gravels in which quartz is dominant. 2) The excavated lithic assemblage includes core, flake, chunk, and stone tool. Stone tool mainly includes scraper that makes up the largest proportion of all the stone tools, point, chopper, handaxe. 3) The flaking technique contains direct hard hammer freehand percussion and bipolar percussion. Freehand cores percussion is dominated by the double-platform and the multi-platform core reduction strategies. 4) Flake blanks were main raw material to make stone tool, other than few chunks or pebbles. Based on the geomorphology and the dating of the sediments from other sites in the Danjiangkou reservoir region, we suggest that the age of the sites is around the late stage of Middle Pleistocene to upper Pleistocene.

Key words: Danjiangkou Reservoir Region, Liangjiagang Locality 2, Donggang Locality, Stone artifacts, handaxe