萨拉乌苏遗址的新材料:范家沟湾1980年出土的旧石器

NEW MATERIALS FROM SALAWUSU SITES OF NORTH CHINA:PALEOLITHS OF 1980 EXCAVATION AT FANJIAGOUWAN

本文报道的旧石器制品出自1980年萨拉乌苏遗址范家沟湾地点的发掘。这是1923年第一次对萨拉乌苏遗址杨四沟湾地点发掘以来收获最大的一次。这两个相邻的地点在地层结构、出土文化遗物和共生动物化石的性质等方面均可对比,因此新地点可看作是萨拉乌苏遗址研究的延续或扩展。本文着重对旧石器石制品的测量和观察,对石器工业的技术和类型学问题也进行一些探讨。其它材料和问题将另文报道和讨论。

?The Salawusu valley is located at the southeastern extremity of the Ordos Plateau in Inner Mongolia , North China. It has been known as one of the key Paleolithic sites in northeastern Asia since 1923 when French paleontologists Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Emile Licent found stone and bone artifacts, remains of fire use as well as abundant mammalian fossils from the fluvialacustrine deposits of the Upper Pleistocene at Yangsigouwan. Stone artifacts from the 1980 excavation at another locality, Fanjiagouwan, are described in the present paper including cores, flakes, retouch flakes (debris) and tools, totaling 192 pieces as well as 10 pieces collected during 1978—1979 . The other associated materials like bone artifacts, fragments of mammals, remains of fire use, and the issue of dating for the sites will be reported by other chance. Most of the stone artifacts were made on a variety of black or gray siliceous shale pebbles, brown quartzite, and gray or white quartz. Based on an survey in 1980, the raw materials are thought to be collected from the western highland about 43?km from the sites. No any stone gravel has been found in Salawusu valley. Most utilized pebbles are originally ranged from 20 to 40 mm in diameter; consequently the tools made from these raw materials are particularly minute with 253?mm long equally, 55×35×132?mm of the largest one and 75×11×3?mm of the smallest one so that were thought as 'purement microlithique' by Henri Breuil ( Boule et al., 1928. p. 125).Most implements are flake tools, although some fashion on nuclei or pebbles have also been recovered. Simple direct percussion seems the common means of core reduction as well as pressure. Considering the minute size and according to the technique characters of the Salawusu retouch flakes and implements, pressure flaking seems to have been used in retouching commonly. In most cases, retouching on specimens at Salawusu is meticulous and fine, although the cutting margins on more implements are rather sinuous. Typical implements include borers, side scrapers, notches, denticulates, end scrapers, burins, and microchoppers, of which the borers are the most regular and the side scrapers are the most divers with simple, straight, doubleedge, convergent, and transverse varieties represented. Geologically, the early researchers distributed the Salawusu sites to the upper Malan Loess of North China, which is equal to the late Upper Pleistocene. However, recent research tends to suggest the early Upper Pleistocene, i.e. the stage 5 of MIS for the sites.