Chronological and typo-technological perspectives on the Palaeolithic archaeology in Lantian, central China

Abstract

Lantian, a well-known place for its early discovery of China's Homo erectus, is located in the northern piedmont of the Qinling Mountains, where the Bahe River flows from west to east. The well-preserved river terrace sequences are composed of fluvial sediments and overlying eolian loess-palaeosol deposits, embedding Palaeolithic artefacts and occasionally hominin fossils. Field investigation revealed more than 40 Palaeolithic localities in the region. Prior to the 1980s, there were 27 Middle Pleistocene open-air sites identified from which more than 200 stone artefacts, and nine Late Pleistocene open-air sites with more than 400 stone artefacts, were collected. Xishuidong is the only cave site to yield both mammalian fossils and stone artefacts in the region. Since 2009 new field surveys have added several open-air sites with more than 700 lithic artefacts from surface collections, which cover a time from the Middle Pleistocene to the Late Pleistocene.This paper provides a general review of the Palaeolithic sites in the Lantian region. The newly discovered lithic artefacts were found in both the loess deposits of the Middle Pleistocene and the Malan loess deposit of the Late Pleistocene. Analyses of the lithic assemblage suggest that the retouched tools comprise both heavy-duty tools, which were made of pebbles and large flakes, such as choppers, heavy-duty scrapers, hand-axes, picks, cleavers and spheroids, and small tools, which were made of small flakes, such as scrapers and points. There were no fundamental changes from the late Early to Late Pleistocene. The recent archaeological discovery of lithic artefacts embedded within the Malan loess deposit suggests that the Acheulian assemblage most likely lasted to the Late Pleistocene in this area. This investigation has shown that the Lantian region is an important area of study on the development of Acheulian technology in East Asia.