Acta Anthropologica Sinica ›› 1999, Vol. 18 ›› Issue (02): 81-101.

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A study of stone artifacts found at the Xiaokouzi prehistoric site

Zhang Senshui   

  • Online:1999-06-15 Published:1999-06-15

Abstract: The prehistoric site named Xiaokouzi is situated about 500m north to the Shuidonggou site just outside the Great Wall( Fig. 1) and was found in September of 1963 when we were excavating the Shuidonggou site. We gathered 194 pieces of the stone artifacts, a few of the broken teeth of mammalian fossils and two pieces of Struthis egg on the ground surface which is slightly higher than the Great Wall. The remains above mentioned are distributed within a limited area of about 30m2 .
The stone artifacts are divided into two groups: Group A is called non-microlithic industrial production which contains 103 specimens of stone artifacts. Most of them are middle and large in size. The tools are made of the flakes and are nicely trimmed in the most cases ( Detail see table 1 in Chinese) . Group B belongs to microlithic industrial production. The stone artifacts include 91 pieces and consist of micro-blades, wedge core and tools which are subdivided into scrapers, pointed tool and awls. The majority o f them is carefully retouched.
Group A non-microlithic industrial production: The general characters could be shown as follows:
1. The flakes were produced by both hard and soft hammer percussion.
2. The cores prepared and flakes are regular in shape. The most important character of the flakes is very small striking platform which makes up 80. 6% of the total flakes.
3. All raw -materials and blanks used to make tool were strictly selected.
4. The different types of the artifacts are obviously diverse in size. The majority of the flakes is smaller and makes up 87. 2% of the total flakes. The majority o f the scrapers consists of types of small and middle sizes. These two types constitute 37. 1% and 42. 7% o f the total respectively while most of the pointed tools are large.
5. The tools are basically manufactured with the flakes and could be divided into scrapers, pointed tools and chopper. All tools, especially convex scrapers and pointed tools are carefully manufactured. Their retouching scars are wide, long , shallow or ladder shape and the edges are regular. According to these characters above mentioned some of them could be trimmed with Mousterian technique.
6. There are some bifaces and simi-bifaces ( one surface is covered over rather flat retouching scars while other surface is locally trimmed with the wide and shallow scars) , the former makes up 20. 8% and latter occupies 8. 0% of the total of the pointed tools.
7. The tools retouched on two surfaces with the method not belonging to alternating mode but to regular complex mode are more common and make up 21. 6% of the tool total.The assemblages which are similar to those of the group A were found in the east part o f the Great Bend of the Huanghe River in 1958 and 1959 by the author and the assemblages with characters similar to group A were found in Shanxi Province, Nei Monggol Autonomous Region, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Hebei Province since that time. The assemblages tentatively dated to the end of the late paleolithic or slightly later age. In the group A some types such as semilunar scrapers , pointed tools with heart shape, bifaces, flat and ladder scars and some blades etc. are similar to those of the Mousterian and Aurignacian ones in Europe so the author imagines that it looks like a group of people mastering those techniques above mentioned had lived there and made cultural exchange with the local people in the Great Bend of Huang he River at least.
Group B Microlithic industrial artifacts: The main characters of Group B could be summed up as follows:
1. The microlithic artifacts are very small and most of them are less than 30mm in length.
2. The micro blades are the chive-leaf in shape. The ridges on the dorsal surface of the microblades are diversified, except the single longitudinal ridge and two longitudinal parallel ridges. This is the significant finding in this study.
3. The tools w ere mostly made of flakes and could be divided into scrapers, awls and pointed tool. The end scrapers are very common and make up 75% o f the total scrapers. Most edges of end scrapers are more sharp. The angle of edge is less than 70°in the most cases. This merits attention because no record of this type of artifacts has been presented in Chinese papers studying microlithic artifacts.
4. Most of the tools were retouched by hammering process while the trimming scars of the end scrapers basically are leaf-like, long, wide and shallow with the trimming scars of nearly parallel, but the trimming scars of 6 end scrapers converge on a point of the edge. On basis of the experiment of making stone artifacts, the convergent trimming scars are similar to those made by pressure method so they could be retouched by this one.
According to size, type and trimming level of the group B the microlithic industrial production is smaller and more delicate in shape. The tool manufacture technique is nicer than tho se found in layer 8 of the Shuidonggou site and is similar to those found in Neolithic microlithic sites of North China, therefore, group B could be tentatively attributed to Neolithic age while group A is dated to upper paleolithic.

Key words: Nice trim, Pointed tool, Microlith , Prehistoric site, Xiaokouzi