A Preliminary Report on 2015’s Excavation at Shixiakou Paleolithic Locality 1
in Gansu Province, North China
REN Jincheng, ZHOU Jing, LI Feng, CHEN Fuyou, GAO Xing
2017, 36(01):
1-16.
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The Shixiakou Paleolithic Locality 1 located in the Shixiakou village, Chuanwang Town, Zhangjiachuan Hui Autonomous Country, Gansu Province, yielded many cultural remains including 2 hearths or related features, 406 stone artifacts, 201 animal fossils, 1 human tooth, 2 beads, as well as some burnt bone fragments and stone debris. This site was buried in situ in the first terrace of the right bank of the Qingshui River. Seven stratigraphic layers were identified from the profile with a total thickness of about 10m. The first three layers and most part of the 4th layer were not excavated. According to the lithology of stratigraphic layers and distribution of cultural remains in the profile, we distinguished two cultural layers which are the 5th and 6th layers, and the stone artifacts of these two cultural layers shared roughly similar technological characteristics. In the meanwhile, the lower part of 4th layer also yielded a few cultural remains. The stone assemblage includes simple cores (n=6), bipolar cores (n=2), flakes (n=97), chunks (n=64), debris (n=129), retouched tools (n=20), microblade cores (n=23), microblades (n=48) and gravels/burnt stones (n=17). Most stone artifacts are mini(<20mm) and small(20~50mm) in size. Quartz and chert are the dominant raw materials, while quartzite, tuff, sandstone, shale, dolomite, trachyte, agate, granite, diabase and lvernite account for small proportion. Microblade cores include many types, such as wedge-shaped cores, cylindrical cores and conical cores, and the occupants of Shixiakou Locality 1 also manufactured microblades using the irregular chunks of quartz without careful preparations. The simple cores were flaked by direct hammer percussion and occasionally by bipolar technique. There are only three types of retouched tools, namely side scrapers, endscrapers and bifacial points. The stone tool assemblage can be considered to be a microblade industry based on typology and the technological features. The major animal fossils are broken pieces, types of which are very simple, including Gazella przewalskyi, Equus and Struthio. The existing AMS14C dates indicate that age of this site is 17.2~18.5ka cal BP, dated into LGM, which also puts the site to the latter stage of Upper Paleolithic.
