Abstract: The Sankeshu Paleolithic site was discovered in the northeast area of Donggutuo village, Yangyuan County, Hebei Province. From a test excavation in autumn of 2008, 251 stone artifacts and some fragmentary bones and teeth were unearthed in four cultural layers. The artifacts included: cores, flakes, tools, chunks and debris, with tools represented by scrapers, points, endscrapers, notches, denticulates, burins, awls and borers. Endscrapers and notches were common in layers 4 and 5. Six “DGT cores”were found in layers 4-6. Most of stone artifacts were small and middle sized. Raw material was mainly quartzose sandstone, quartz, chert, dolomite and basalt, which were common in local bedrock and cobbles. Like the Hougou site, the Sankeshu site is also located in the upper part of the Nihewan Beds and thus belongs to a rarely found late period site in this area. This site is situated just below the Hougou site and above the Maliang site, and therefore the age of the site should be later than the former but earlier than the latter. Considering the cultural features, materials from this site can reasonably belong to the middle or late period of the Middle Pleistocene. The discovery of “DGT cores ” here strengthens the significance of this site for discussing tradition of small tool industry including microlithic culture in north China.

Key words: Nihewan basin; Sankeshu site; Paleolithic; Stone artifacts; “DGT cores”