贵州毕节扁扁洞的旧石器

PALEOLITH OF BIANBIAN CAVE AT BIJIE COUNTY, GUIZHOU PROVINCE

贵州毕节扁扁洞里发现的60余件石制品中,石器类型不多,加工较复杂但不够精致。与石制品伴出的10余种哺乳动物化石属大熊猫——剑齿象动物群的成员。含化石和文化遗物的地层为黄色堆积。地质时代可能属晚更新世早一阶段或稍早,文化时代为旧石器时代中期或稍早。

The Paleolithic site of Bianbian Cave is situated at the foot of Triassic limestone hill near Haizijie town about .13 km north-east of Bijie County (105°23'E, 27°22'N), and is about 1520m above sea level. The cave is 26m long, 1.2-12.4 m wide and 2-4.2m high. In the cave some of the deposits were disturbed but main deposits were still kept in the depth of the cave, divided into 4 stratified layers from top to bottom (Chinese text figure 1). From this cave 75 pieces of stone artifacts and over 10 species of mammalian fossils were discovered during the survey and excavation. 35 pieces of the stone artifacts were unearthed from layers 1, 3 and 4, the others were found in the disturbed deposits. They may be divided into 5 groups: cores, flakes, blades, pitted pebbles and tools. The stone tools include scrapers, choppers and point, the former is the main type in the assemblage. The technology of flaking and retouch seems to bear closer relation to that of the Guanyindon Culture. Fossil remains associated with the stone artifacts consist of Panthera tigris, Ursus thibe-tanus, Stegodon orientalis, Rhinoceros sinensis, Megatapirus augustus and so on, belonging to the Ailttropoda-Stegodon fauna. According to the fossil mammals, the geological age of the locality is considered as the early Late Pleistocene or somewhat earlier, and Middle Paleolithic or a little earlier archaeologically.