Abstract:

Jinghe River system is one of the important areas on the study of human occupied patterns in Northwest China. In 1920, some stone artifacts were recovered from loess deposit by French Archaeologist E. Licent in Zhaojiacha and Xinjiagou, which marked the beginning milestone of Chinese Paleolithic Archaeology. In the past century, many Paleolithic localities such as Niujiaogou, Shigoukou, Loufangzi from Qingyang and Pingliang of Gansu, Yaotougou and Dabeigou from Changwu and Qianxian of Shannxi, which enriched the early human adapted data in the Jinghe River system. However, all the discoveries are buried in the Upper and Middle Jinghe River system, and the investigations were carried out several decades ago, while few information was gotten in the lower Jinghe River system. The new findings of this Paleolithic survey fill in gaps in the Lower Jinghe River system to some extent. Sixteen localities were discovered which centralized in the second terrace of the Middle to Lower Jinghe River system, and sixty-three stone artifacts were recovered from the loess deposit. The new discovered lithic artifacts include cores, flakes and scrapers, which can be assigned to the Flake Tool Tradition in North China. Judging from the artifact layers and comparison among the geomorphology and stratigraphy in Jinghe River system, the age of the artifact layers can be deduced to Late Pleistocene.

Key words: Survey, Jinghe river, Stone artifacts, Loess, Late Pleistocene