A Study On The Stone Artifacts Locality Youfangbei In Nihewan Basin

Youfangbei locality,situated in Nihewan Basin of Yangyuan County,Hebei Province,north China,is about 150 meters from the Youfang site and they were separated by a natural gully.Its main cultural layer,being 2 meters thick,is located at the bottom of the northern terrace of the gully,which was superimposed by a loess-like deposit,containing a black-brown soil belt.The thickness of the whole stratigraphy is about 12 meters and situated on the bedrock(Jurassic Pink Gravel Layer).The main trench area was 3 square meters and we obtained 641 samples,consisting of the stone artefacts,animal fossils as well as pebbles.This thesis mainly uses 587 stone artefacts unearthed from the site.Through typology analysis,technology analysis and statistical analysis,we detailly analyzes the stone artefacts assemblages,the procurement strategy and exploring strategy of raw material.The research indicates that the raw materials of stone artefacts were collected from the surface bedrock of the Zhoujiashan Mountain,near the Youfangbei Site.The stone artefacts assemblage consists of cores,flakes,chunks,and tools and so forth.The stone tools are dominated by different kinds of scrapers as well as contain stone hammers,used flakes,notches,points,borers and choppers.The cores were exploited by direct percussion with hard hammers,showing simple debitage.According to the number of the platform,cores can be divided into single-platform cores,double-platform cores and multiple-platform cores.The exploited efficiency of cores is low,flakes were knapped by direct percussion and few flakes were knapped by bipolar technique.The complete flakes are dominated by V-type flakes and majority flakes were processed into tools.However,the most tools were made of chunks.A lot of tools are small and there is only one work edge.The tool processing length index is high,contrast the processing depth index is low.The tools were retouched by direct percussion with a hard hammer,from the ventral to back,and the retouched scars are mainly single layer and few multiple superimposed layers.Classification of the paleosomal paleontology fossils(mesomorphs,snails,etc.)extracted from the site indicates that the paleosomal fossils of mesomorphs and snails are mainly concentrated in the upper and middle cultural layers.Most species lived in the temporary water environments or shallow water environments.In combination with the sediment particles,I suggest that the cultural layer is mainly located in the river terrace with the wetland environment,and the climate,when the site processed,changed from dry-warm environment to cold-wet environment.OSL dating shows that the age of the cultural layer is 100 ka BP to 90 ka BP,which is equivalent to OIS 5,the Last Interglacial.The comparison with other sites,the same period sites from all of the world and all the Paleolithic sites in China,suggests that the Youfangbei locality is a small flake industry,without any western factor.The overall industrial appearance is consistency with the cultural tradition in North China.At present,the number of sites found in the Last Interglacial in China is relatively small.The find of Youfangbei locality has added more information on human activities in the OIS5 stage of North China,which is important for us to study the change and development of stone technique in this region.