The paleoliths newly discovered at the Xigou site, Quwo county, Shanxi province
Liu Yuan
1986, 5(04):
325-335.
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The Xigou site is located at the western side of the confluence of Chaoyangxigou Valley and the Fuhe River, the tributary of the Fenhe River in the Chaoyang village of Quwo county, Shanxi province (111°26 50 E, 35°44'09 N) . It is about 12 KM northwest to the famous Ding- cun site.
The Xigou site was found and preliminarily reported in 1956. From Aug. to Sept. of 1983, the author and others made excavation at this site. 514 stone artifacts, one human tooth and some fossils (2 gen. and 4 species) were buried in the sand contained calcarious nodules and a few small gravels from the third terrace. The members of the fossils are Pelceypoda, Gastropoda, Struthio sp. , Equus hemionus, E. przewalskyi, Coelodonta antiquitatis, Bovinae gen. ind. , Antilopinae gen. ind. and Homo sapiens. In he light of geology, geomorphology and the fauna, it is considered that the age of the Xigou Site is the upper Pleistocene. Tested by uranium series method, the date of the Xigou site is about 50, 000 B. P.
The artifacts are predominantly made of pebbles of flint and quartz. The scrapers are major component of the assemblage, and the points and burins are the second. The chopper-choPping tools, the bifaces, a saw, a stone ball and a stone hammer are also found. The direct percussion method was mainly used in the industry of the site and the bipolar method was used sporadically. The sides of the flakes were trimmed to become rather straight working edges from the ventral to the dorsal. It is one of the attributes of the industry that the bifacial retouchment makes up relative proportion. According to the worked traces on the edges, the retouching methods were mostly used by stone hammer, a few of them by soft-hammer method. There are most edges of the tools with about 75°. But the repeated retouchment resulted in the rather blunt edges of some tools and abrupt edged scrapers. The most stone tools are medium and small in size.
The excavation of this site has raised as many questions as it has answered. We have unearthed artifacts similar to those at Xujiayao and Shiyu in technology and dimension, and discovered the other components similar to those a Dingcun in technology and typology. In 1972, Prof. Jia Lanpo and others proposed two culture traditions in the northern Chinese Old Stone Age. The Xujiayao and Shiyu sites are the meinters of "the Loc. 1 of Zhoukoudian-Shiyu tradition", and the Dingcun site represents an example of "the Kehe-Dingcun tradition". So the Xigou site can not be classified as belonging exclusively to either one of these two traditions. However, it does appear that the industry at th Xigou site more closely resembles that of the Xujiayao and Shiyu sites. It is necessary to study further into the industries in the Xigou site and two traditions and compare them in details.
The pollen analysis indicates that the herbs such as Gramineae, Chenopodiaceae, Artemisia are common, and Pinus are of a little quantity. The majority in the fauna is typical grassland group. An environment of semi-dry, thinly wooded forests and grassland of the temperate zone can be suggested.
