A Preliminary Report on the Excavation of the Shujialing Paleolithic Site
in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Region
LI Yiyuan, GAO Chenglin, XIANG Kaiwang
2015, 34(02):
149-165.
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The Shujialing Paleolithic site, buried in the third terrace of the right bank of the Hanshui River, is located in Shujialing village, Niuhe town, Danjiangkou City, Hubei Province. As a salvage archeological project, the site was excavated from March to July 2012 by the staff of the Institute of Hunan Provincial Archaeological and Cultural Relics. This excavation exposed an area of about 2784m2, and 1954 stone artifacts were unearthed form the site. Fifty-four stone artifacts were also surface collected from the site. The stone assemblage includes cores (n=158), flakes (n=294), chunks (n=437), raw material types (n=942), hammers (n=12) and retouched tools (n=111). About seven kinds of raw materials are utilized in core reduction and tool manufacture, with quartz being the predominant type(49.8% of the assemblage. The principal flaking technique is direct hammer percussion without core preparation. Three kinds of blanks for tool fabrication are pebbles, flakes and chunks, with pebbles being the predominant type. There are five retouched tool classes identified: choppers, scrapers, picks, points and cleavers that are all retouched by direct hammer percussion. According to the survey, lithic raw materials were locally available from ancient riverbeds close to the site. Generally the extent of raw material consumption was low judging from the characters of cores and flakes. Picks and choppers are large and medium in size, while the scrapers and points are small. In general, the stone tool assemblage shows close associations with the Pebble Tool Industry (Main Industry) in South China. Compared to previous periods, more light-body tools including scrapers were more common as was the amount of quartz. Geomorphological and chronological comparison with other sites indicates that the age of this site is late Pleistocene, namely the Middle Paleolithic. The Hanshui River region is situated in a transitional area between the two main industries of north and south China, an important region for early hominid occupation, migration and cultural exchange during Pleistocene. Thus excavation of the Shujialing site enriches the human occupation details in this area and also bears great significance in studying human occupation behaviors of the Late Pleistocene.
