Abstract:

The Cenjiawan Platform of the Nihewan Basin is one of the regions with intensive prehistoric human activities in North China. It boasts a large number of Paleolithic sites, a long chronological span, diverse raw material types, and varying qualities. Stone materials, as crucial means for prehistoric people to produce tools, significantly influenced early humans’ manufacturing techniques, population migrations, and social organizational structures. The selection of raw materials also mirrored ancient people’s understanding and utilization of resources, ultimately reflecting the evolution of their cognitive abilities. Abundant stone resources are among the indispensable factors contributing to the rich remains of prehistoric human activities in this area.

To ascertain the provenance of stone artifact raw materials at the sites and the approximate distribution of surrounding stone resources, we conducted a specialized investigation. The area was divided into eight regions based on the longitudinal geological sections and bedrock exposures. After identifying the main raw material lithologies through thin-section petrographic analysis, we described the distribution of stone materials in each region. Among the sites in the Cenjiawan platform area, flint predominantly originates from the Youfang fault and Zhoujiashan bedrock; dolomite and siliceous limestone mainly come from slope deposits; and esitic porphyrite, basalt, tuff, and other igneous rocks primarily come from the Huoshigou and Hougou areas. The above-mentioned raw materials, along with others that account for a relatively small proportion at the sites, are found in the gravel layer at the bottom of the Nihewan Formation. Subsequently, based on previous studies, we compared and analyzed the stone material resources in the investigation area with the lithic raw material sources of the archaeological sites discovered there, inferring the possible raw material sources of the sites. The results basically indicate that prehistoric inhabitants in this area mainly adopted the strategy of sourcing stone materials locally to meet the needs of stone artifact production with the minimum transportation cost. The scarcity of high-quality raw materials and the utilization of abundant nearby stone materials provide insights into the “expediency” of prehistoric human stone tool production at that time. It also reflects the limited scope of human activities, the low demand for high-quality stone materials, and the extent of their environmental awareness. This paper combines petrographic and macroscopic observation methods to preliminarily establish the relationship between archaeological sites and stone material sources. However, the current research is more abundant in qualitative inferences, which need to be further quantified using more advanced technological means.

Key words: Nihewan basin, Cenjiawan Platform, Lithic raw material, Source of material, Local material procurement