Abstract: The Songwan Paleolithic locality, buried in the third terrace of the right bank of the Danjiang River, is located in the Songwan village, Shengwan town, Xichuan County, Henan Province. The locality was excavated from March 12 to April 24, 2009, scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (Chinese Academy of Sciences), as a salvageable archaeological project due to the construction of the Dangjiangkou reservoir dam at a higher latitude. The excavation exposed an area of about 800㎡.
Four stratigraphic layers of the third terrace were identified at the site, with the total thickness of more than 10 meters. Archaeological materials were mainly unearthed from the 2nd and 3rd layers, two layers of brown-red clay and red silty clay (or latosol), 5.5~7.5 m in thickness, about 10-15m above the Dangjiangkou reservoir water-level in April 2009. A total of 353 stone artifacts and many of cobbles were unearthed.
The stone assemblage includes cores (N=24), flakes (187), chunks (132) and retouched tools (10). The general features of these artifacts are summarized as follows:
1) Lithic raw materials exploited at the locality were locally available from ancient riverbeds. Quartzite was the predominant raw material (98.87%) used for stone artifacts.
2) The principal flaking technique was direct hammer percussion without core preparation. There was a high percentage (70.18%) of type III and VI flakes.
3) Most stone artifacts (95.07%) were small or medium in size.
4) Most blanks for tool fabrication were flakes. Only three retouched tool classes were identified, specifically scrapers, choppers, and points.
5) Modified tools appeared to be simply retouched by direct hammer percussion, mostly bificially retouched on the one end of the blank.
It can be inferred from the excavation that the stone assemblage of the site shows close relationship with the Pebble Tool Industry (Main Industry) in South China, but bears the characteristics of the Flake Tool Industry of North China. Geomorphological and chronological comparisosn in the upper reaches of the Hanshui River valley indicates that the geochronology of the locality should be close to Middle Pleistocene.
Excavation of the Songwan locality not only enriches the human occupation data in the Danjiang River drainage area, but also bears great significance in studying human occupation behaviors in the Middle Pleistocene. Therefore, it is affirmed that the coming excavation of Paleolithic locality and Paleolithic research in the Danjiang River drainage area will give more evidence to the study of early human culture, early human migration and clarify the cultural relationship between North and South China during Middle Pleistocene.

Key words: Middle Pleistocene; Stone; Artifacts; Songwan; Danjiangkou Reservoir