Abstract: Xinqiao paleolithic site, 113°33′E and 36°42′N, lies on the south of Xinqiao village in Shexian county, Hebei province. It was excavated in 1994 and 1995.896 stone artifacts w ere unearthed from four paleosoil layers in Lishi Loess, and 73 pieces were collected from the cliffnear the site. The site is comparable w ith the 3rd terrace of the Qingzhang River geographically.
The stone industry is characterized as follows:
The raw materials are mainly quartz-sandstone and rarely vein quartz. The stone artifacts consist of cores, flakes, hammer stones and tools which are divided into scraper, chopper-chopping tool, spheroid and burin-like tool. The scrapers are common type compared with the others. Only one burin-like specimen is obtained.Most of the flakes are produced by free-hand hammer percussion, bipolar technique was used occasionally. The majority of the flakes are irregular in shape and large or middle in size, and the flake angles are less than 118° in common. No cores or flakes with prepared platform and rare used flakes are discovered.The tools which cover 1.44% in whole collection are retouched by direct percussion with hard hammer and made by cobbles or fragment-shaped materials, most of them are large and middle in size.
Technologically and typologically, the stone artifacts from Xinqiao site show a mixture North and South paleolithic assemblages which is characterized in the transitional region in China. On the whole they are similar to those from such places as Kaix uanlulocality and Beiyao site at Luoyang city, Xiaokongshan site at Nanzhao county, Longtouw an locality at Xixia county, Henan province and so on. From the analy sis of geomorphology and stratigraphy, the site could be dated to be the late M iddle Pleistocene or late stage of the Lower Paleolithic. Xinqiao site is the first paleolithic site discovered in the southeast foot of Taihang Mountains.

Key words: Paleolith; Late Middle Pleistocene; Xinqiao site