A likely Early Paleolithic lithic assemblage from the Xiayaogou Houshan site, Central China

Abstract

The Xiayaogou Houshan site is one of more than 10 Paleolithic localities located during archaeological survey searching for Paleolithic localities in Xixia County, Nanyang City, Henan Province, in September 2020, carried out jointly by a team from the School of Archaeology of Jilin University and the Nanyang City Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute. The Xiayaogou Houshan site lithic assemblage includes cores, tools, and chunks, with small, flaked stone artifacts being the most abundant. Analysis of the lithics shows that the main industrial features are hard hammer percussion technology and bipolar technology. Scrapers are the most abundant retouched tool, and they were retouched by direct percussion with a mainly forward direction of retouch. All of the lithic artifacts found were chipped, and there were no ground or polished stone objects or pottery found. There were also no cultural materials suitable for dating, such as animal bone or carbonized plant materials, discovered. The available geological, stratigraphic, and artifact evidence, however, suggests that this locality should date to the Middle Pleistocene. Thus, Xiayaogou Houshan is likely an Early Paleolithic period locality.