| Abstract: |
In co-operation with the staffs of the Provincial Museum of Kweichow in Kweiyang, the Kweichow field team of our Institute, leading by Yuan Chen-sin, has excavated a cave, named Kuanyintung, situated on a hill side in Chienshihsien, about 170 km. northwest of Kweiyang (Fig. 1). As a result of a prospective digging, we discovered about more than one hundred pieces of chert flakes and well trimmed artifacts in association with a good amount of Pleistocene fossils of the so-called "Stegodon-AUuropoda fauna" well-known in the caves in South China. As the artifacts and mammalian fossils are found in the deposits covered by a thick layer of stalagmitic crust, the Palaeolithic age of the collected chert implements can be ascertained. The chert flakes are thick and irregular in shape and seem to be all produced by direct hammering process, as demonstrated by the bulb left by flaking. But, the technique of retouches exercised on the Kweichow artifacts seems to be very special: as observable from the detached chips on their edges, the secondary work on them seems to be practiced by heavy and repeated blows of a hammer stone in a direction perpendicular to the surface of the flake (vide, Figs. 47 in Chinese text). And the retouches were very elaborately worked all around the edges of the flake, usually including its platform. By such a technique, it makes the implements have an edge, blunt and unusable for cutting. Such a method of chipping to make chert tools, it seems, can scarcely be found any analogue in Palaeolithics so far known in Europe and in North China. However, somewhat similar technique of working by heavy and repeated blows, but chiefly for flaking, can be observed on the nuclei or flakes of Choukoutien Loc. 1 or practiced by Sinanthropus pekinensis. Therefore, we assume that we are now facing something quite new to Palaeolithic industries known in Europe and perhaps somewhat related to those known in North China. Regular excavation of this new cave will be organized in the near future, in the hope of knowing more about the nature of lithic industry firstly discovered in Kweichow of South China.
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