The excavation of the Modaoshan Site of the Paleolithic Age in Yunan County, Guangdong

Abstract

In 2014, Guangdong Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and other institutions excavated Locality 1 of the Modaoshan (Whetting Hill) Site in Yunan County, Guangdong. The excavation recovered almost 400 pieces of lithic products mostly made of quartz, sandstone and quartzite, plus a few made of fine sandstone and metasandstone, the categories of which included blanks, cores, flakes, tools, chunks, debris and utilized gravels, containing the entire procedure from blank fetching, stone tool making and refuse abandoning, and the finished tools took small proportion. The date of Locality 1 was the early stage of the Middle Pleistocene, belonging to the Lower Paleolithic Age. The Modaoshan Site is the first open site of the Paleolithic Age scientifically excavated in Guangdong Province and the earliest cultural remains of the early human beings in Guangdong Province confirmed to date.