Cobbles during the final Pleistocene-early Holocene transition: An original lithic assemblage from Maomaodong rockshelter, Guizhou Province, southwest China

Abstract

The persistence of the cobble-tool tradition in South China and Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) is a major characteristic of the Paleolithic culture in this region, and researchers have long recognized this phenomenon since the 1940s (H. Movius). However, the cobble-tool tradition is not without changes and diversity; the most significant is the emergence of the Hoabinhian phenomenon in Southwest China and MSEA during the final Late Pleistocene. The Hoabinhian tools could well illustrate the presence of variability among the cobble tools produced by modern humans. However, the technological variability of lithic industries on a larger scale remains elusive because only a few sites have been studied with a technological method and provided more detailed information than the definition of ‘simple chopper-chopping tool’ assemblages, which disguised diverse local facts and various knapping strategies. Here we expose an original technological behavior on cobbles discovered at Maomaodong rockshelter, Guizhou Province, southwest China. The lithic assemblage is characterized by the cobble-split flaking dating to the final Pleistocene-early Holocene transition. On the one hand, dominated by flaking and small flake tools rather than shaping and large/heavy tools, Maomaodong lithic assemblage could represent a new knapping strategy among the ‘cobble/pebble tradition’ in southern China and MSEA. On the other hand, macroscopic and diachronic observations of the lithic industries on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau indicate that the lithic technology at Maomaodong is also a continuity of the local core-flaking tradition. The originality of Maomaodong lies in the reconciliation of the two traditions (i.e., cobble/pebble-tool and core-flaking traditions), making it different from both.