Acta Anthropologica Sinica ›› 1982, Vol. 1 ›› Issue (01): 18-103.

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Middle paleolithic remains found in Zhangwu county, Shaanxi

Gai Pei, Huang Wanpo   

  • Online:1982-03-15 Published:1982-03-15

Abstract: The spectacular assemblage of stone artifacts described here was found in Zhang- wu county, Shaanxi Province. This assemblage includes nuclei, flakes, points, and a large number of scrapers. Stratigraphieally , they were unearthed from the sand-gravel deposits under loess. Considering its stratigraphical position, this site should be dated early Late Pleistocene, and culturally of the Middle Paleolithic period.
Taking into account all the cultural remains up to now found in the sand gravel layer under the loessin North China we may distinguish two or more quite different Middle Paleolithic cultures. One of them is the Fen He Culture (Ting-tsun culture) which is found in the Fen He hollow between Taihang and Luliang Mountains. The specific feature of the Fen He Culture may be summarized as follows: the artifacts mainly are made of black hornet, presence of spheloid stones, large polyedral nuclei, large flakes, large triangular points, and abundance of various types of bifacial tools in which the small points were made crudely.
Another Middle Paleolithic culture, named in this paper the Jing Wei Culture, is geographically distributed mainly in the Jing and Wei rivers' vallies between Luliang and Holang mountains. The majority of ar tifacts of Jing Wei Culture are made of quartz, no spheloid stones and large triangle points are in evidence. Various types of small scrapers are aboundant. The small points are made regularly and carefully.
The flat and square cores and elongated flakes found in Jing Wei Culture show its genetic relation to the well-known Shui-Dong-Gou Culture of Late Paleolithic period in North China. It is noteworthy, that the elongated flakes found in Shui-Dong-Gou site have purely morphological similarities to the mieroblades of Final Pleistocene and Holocene. The reason for this is that the mieroblades are detached from quite different type of cores than the Shui-Dong-Gou types.

Key words: Middle Paleolithic