Abstract: The Orient Plaza site near Wangfujing Street in Beijing was discovered at the end of 1996 and excavated during the following eight months. Two cultural horizons were identified from the fluvial-lacustrine sediments. More than 2000 cultural relics were unearthed from the site, including stone and bone artifacts, fossils, hematite powder, fire use remains, and plant root and foliage. A total of 1098 stone artifacts were collected from the site, Among them, 1027 were from the lower cultural horizon and 71 pieces from the upper cultural horizon. The stone assemblage consists of hammers, anvils, chunks, cores, flakes, and formal tools including scrapers, points, burins and borers.
The general characteristics of the stone assemablge are as follows:
1) Stone artifacts from both horizons have similar features in raw materials, types and technology, so they should belong to one industrial tradition.
2) Most stone artifacts are made on black fine chert pebbles, and account for more than 99 % of all stone pieces.
3) Most of the stone artifacts are small, under 50 mm in length.
4) Flakes of many types (ones with natural platforms, scarred platform, etc.) dominate the stone assemblage.
5) Scrapers especially single2edged ones dominate the assemblage. Burins are in the second place, especially single2edged ones. Retouch is common.
6) Direct hammer method was used to produce the flakes, with the bipolar method being used occasionally. It is thought that the direct hammer method was used to retouch the tools.
The assemblage of the Orient Plaza site is similar to that of the Late Paleolithic sites of North China where flakes and flake tools are predominant. By comparing these artifacts with Early and Middle Paleolithic sites in this region, we believe that this stone assemblage belongs to the small stone tool tradition that prevailed throughout the Paleolithic Age of North China.

Key words: the Orient Plaza site; Stone artifacts; Flake and flake-tool industry; Late Paleolithic