Abstract: The Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Arizona conducted collaborative field studies during June 1987. The study vielded a total of six artifact-bearing localities in Southern Xinjiang that are thought to reflect two discrete periods of occupation.
The investigation was carried out along the southern margin of the Taklamakan Desert. The area is bounded by 36°10′-37°40'N, 79°20'-83°50'E, and it includes the Kunlun front range as well as the dissected gobi plain separating the Kunluns from the Taklamakan Desert.
The following sites were located:
1. Locality XYE-87: about 10km south of Hayen Dake on the right bank of the Yurungkax (White Jade) River at an elevation of about 1600 m a.s.l.
2. Locality XNF-87: on the third terrace of the upper Niya River northwest of Nagerihana about 15km north of the river's major confluence at an elevation of about 2000 m.
3. Locality XLF-87: located east of Hetian (Khotan) City between Lop Bazar and Yangdakeleke (about 25 km southeast of Lop Bazar) on the third alluvial fan surface at an elevation of about 1500 m a.s.1.
4. Locality XNM-87: located at an. elevation of about 2600 m near the confluence of the Niya and Wulukesayi rivers on the first terrace of the Niya River about 52 km south of Minfeng City.
5. Locality XKM-87: about 4km south of the Yutian County Water Control Station on the second terrace of the left bank of the Keriya River at an altitude of about 2000 m.
6. Locality XDM-87: about 17 km east of Yutian City approximately 1000 m north of the Southern Xinjiang Highway at an altitude of about 1500m.
The six sites which were discovered can be divided into two categories. The first, three (XYE-87, XNF-87, and XLF-87) contained only large flaked stone, non-microlithic, aceramic assemblages that we consider to be of probable late Pleistocene affinity due to typological and geomorphological considerations. However, the fact that all occurrences discovered thus far derive from surface contexts makes their absolute chronology impossible to determine. Artifacts associated with these sites include hammerstones, side-choppers, a protobiface-like double -edged chopper and large direct percussion hard hammer flakes made on andesitic porphyrite, metamorphic sandstone, quartzite and hornfels.
The second category (XNM -87, XKM-87, and XDM-87) all yielded microlithic assemblages made on quartzite and hornfels generally in association with red sand-tempered ceramic fragments. Consequently, these sites are thought to be of Holocene. Neolithic derivation and may date to the climatic optimum of 7000 -4000 bp. The wide variety of localities where these microliths were found, spreads across Central Asia as far west as the Pamir Plateau and Afghanistan and as far south as Tibet.
While the evidence from southern Xinjiang docs not yet provide us with unequivocal evidence of Pleistocene human occupation, all lines of evidence point to an age corresponding perhaps to the Last Glacial Maximum for the XYF-87, XNF-87, and XLF-87 localities.

Key words: Tarim; Flaked stone artifacts; Microlithic artifacts