Abstract: A large number of stone leaf technology stone products have been collected from many sites and sites in the upper reaches of the Han River, including stone leaves, stone leaf cores, repair stone leaves, scrapers, concave defect devices, stone hammers, serrated blades, stone knives, cone drills, spearheads and sharpened stone leaf stone knives, etc. This set of artifacts is different from the currently known Paleolithic stone leaf technology products. More than 100 pieces of stone leaf stone hammers have been excavated in the early and middle cultural layers, ash pits and tombs of the Yangshao culture excavated at the xiawanggang and Baligang sites in Huaichuan, which are the same as the stone leaf stone hammers collected from the stone, stone leaf technology, trimming and product form, and other collected stone leaf products are also mostly from the Neolithic accumulation, so it can be proved that the stone leaf technical products in the upper reaches of the Han River belong to the Neolithic Yangshao culture period. This shows that the stone leaf technology in the eastern part of Eurasia also continued to the Neolithic Age, dating back to the Yangshao culture period, and reaching the upper reaches of the Han River to the south.
Keywords: Han Water Upstream; Yangshao Culture; Stone Leaf Technology; Stone Leaf Stone Hammer
In the second issue of Jianghan Archaeology in 2018, the article "Brief On the Investigation of Flint Remains in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Area" (hereinafter referred to as the "Brief") published the materials of 3540 flint products found in the investigation of 35 sites and sites in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Area. The bulletin divides this batch of flint stone products into three technical systems: gravel stone tools, stone stone tools and stone leaf stone tools, and believes that "the first two are similar to the technical styles of the gravel stone tool industry and the stone stone tool industry in the reservoir area, and the stone leaf stone tool technology is close to the stone leaf industry at the Xishi site"[1]. Although the briefing does not explicitly identify the age of these flintstones, it clearly tends to belong to the Paleolithic age. The large number of stone leaves and their products found in the Danjiangkou reservoir area is the most distributed in eastern China, and the stone leaf technology is related to the beginning of the late Paleolithic period, the cultural exchange between the East and the West, and the migration and diffusion of modern people, so it has attracted widespread attention. However, based on the exact age of the stone leaf excavation site, this paper determines that this batch of stone leaf products should belong to the early and middle Neolithic Yangshao culture, and has nothing to do with the origin of The Paleolithic stone leaf technology in China.
1. Stone leaf products and Paleolithic stone leaf technology in danjiangkou reservoir area
A total of 1093 stone leaf stone tool technical products were announced in the "Briefing", including two kinds of blanks of stone leaves and stone leaf stone cores, as well as 9 kinds of stone leaf stone tool products such as repairing stone leaves, scrapers, concave defects, stone hammers, serrated blades, stone knives, cone drills, spearheads, and grinding stone leaf stone knives (some of the utensils are shown in Figures 1 and 2). In addition, the Bulletin introduces three artifacts between the serrated edge-dent, the dent-scraper, and the scraper-engraver (Table 1, item "Other"). The Bulletin does not indicate whether the samples collected were also processed stone leaves and stone chips produced during the processing of stone tool products from stone leaves as blanks.
Among these stone leaf technical products, there are only 5 stone leaf stone cores and are only found in the four districts. The number of stone leaves is the largest, but half of them are incomplete, and there are also a very small number of broad stone leaves (8 pieces) and cockscomb stone leaves (3 pieces). Among the stone leaf stone tools, the number of repaired stone leaves, scrapers, concave defects and stone hammers is the largest, each of which is 60 pieces, followed by serrated blades, stone knives, and cone drills, and the number of spearheads, ground stone leaf stone knives and other artifacts is very small. Most of the stone leaves collected from Danjiangkou Reservoir are a dorsal ridge, and there are also a few two or "Y" shaped dorsal ridges, while the 5 stone leaf cores are columnar, which can be seen to be a typical prismatic stone core leaf technology.
The "Briefing" states that among the sites where shiye was found in the Danjiangkou reservoir area in table I above, the first district is from Shenmingpu and Xiawanggang, the second district is from Shuanghe Town, the third district is from Kengnan, the fourth district is from Xiasi Wharf, Yuegou and Boshan, the fifth district is from the Taizishan ruins, while the second district Shuanghe Town, the third district Kengnan and the fifth district Taizishan have only 22, 29 and 2 stone leaf products, respectively, and the specific number of Shenmingpu, the fourth district Xiasi wharf and Yuegou is unknown, but according to table 1 of the "Briefing", the flint products in these three locations are 18, 11 and 80 respectively. Among them, if there are stone leaf products, it will naturally not exceed these numbers. Therefore, as the "Briefing" suggests, the investigation of stone leaves and their products in the Danjiangkou reservoir area is mainly from the two sites of Xiawanggang and Boshan, accounting for about 90% of the number. Although the lack of concave and serrated blade tools in the Lower Wanggang stone tool is the two more common types of Boshan tools, the proportion of stone hammers is much higher than that of Boshan, but the types of stone tools and stone leaf technology are the same, which can be seen to belong to the same technical system.
Scholars such as Li Feng have divided the stone leaf technical remains excavated from the Paleolithic period in China into two categories[3], one is the coexistence of Levalova stone leaves and prismatic stone leaf stone cores, and the other is the coexistence of prismatic stone leaf cores and fine stone leaf technology, the former including Ningxia Shuidonggou, Heilongjiang Huma EighteenTh Station and Xinjiang Camel Stone Site, which are older, and the latter includes Hebei Nihewan Oil Mill, Henan Dengfeng Xishi and Eastern Jilin and Longshi Rengou and Dadong, which are later in age. The Levalova stone leaf method is not found in the stone leaf technology system of the Danjiangkou reservoir area, and the types of stone tools are very different from the types of tools based on end scrapers and engravers in the former. The investigation of the Danjiangkou reservoir area also found a total of 11 fine stone leaves in the third district (Kengnan site) and the fourth district, and the coexistence of stone leaves and fine stone leaves seems to be somewhat similar to the latter, but the proportion of fine stone leaves in the Danjiangkou reservoir area is too low, and the stone tool types are also very different from the stone tool combinations of scrapers, end scrapers, carvings, sharp tools, and small knives of the latter, and there is no stone hammer in the latter stone leaf stone tool species.
Take the Site of Dengfeng Xishi, the site of the nearest excavated stone leaf from the Danjiangkou Reservoir, as an example[4], the lower level of this site is a stone leaf technology stone tool production site dating back to 25,000 years ago, with 227 stone leaves, 62 stone leaf cores, 82 fine stone leaves, and 3 fine stone cores, and the proportion of fine stone leaves is close to 30%. Xi Shi is also a typical prismatic stone core leaf technique, but the stone leaves are wider and shorter than those excavated from the Danjiangkou Reservoir (Figure 3). The types of stone tools in Xishi include end scrapers, scrapers, engravers and sharp tools, mainly end scrapers, all made of stone chips, while the stone leaf stone tools of Danjiangkou Reservoir are repair stone leaves, scrapers, concave devices, stone hammers, serrated blades, stone knives, cone drills and spearheads.
Therefore, if the stone leaf stone products in the Danjiangkou reservoir area are indeed the products of the same technical system, they are not the same as any Paleolithic stone leaf technology system known before, and they are a self-contained system.
Second, the stone leaf stone of yangshao culture in the upper reaches of the Han River
In fact, the "Briefing" gives many dating clues to the stone leaf technology products in the Danjiangkou reservoir area. This batch of stone leaf technology products are mainly from the two sites of Xiawanggang and Boshan, the site of Xiawanggang itself is mainly based on Neolithic accumulation, and the Boshan site "flintstone products and Neolithic cultural relics have coexisted and associated phenomena". In addition, in table 1 of the "Bulletin", there are neolithic ash pits or accumulations found in the three sites of Nanhe, Machuan and Gouwan, and flintstone products are found, among which the ash pits of flint products from the Machuan site contain pottery pieces from the Qujialing culture period. In this way, the stone leaf products in the Danjiangkou reservoir area are likely to belong to the Neolithic era, but the specific period of the Neolithic era, the "Briefing" has no clear clues. In addition, the Nanyang Huangshan site has also collected a stone leaf remnant, which should be a stone waste product[5], and Huangshan is also a Neolithic site, including Yangshao culture, Qujialing culture and Shijiahe culture accumulation.
After many excavations in the 1970s and early 1999, the Xiawanggang site has published two excavation reports, both of which have published a number of materials related to stone leaf technology products, but these products are stone hammers. In the 1970s excavation report, 4 pieces of stone leaf stone hammers (original report II) found in the first phase of Yangshao culture were announced, of which 2 were published as stacking units, namely T11:207 and M285. There are 63 pieces of Yangshao culture in the second phase of "stone blanks that have only been processed for the first time, with leaf shapes and triangles in shape", but no excavated units and drawings have been published, most of which should be stone leaf stone hammers. Yangshao Culture Phase III Type II. 5 pieces of "quartzite beating" stone hammer should also be flint stone leaf stone hammer, published 1 piece of the accumulation unit is T7:43 [6]. Excavations in Xiawanggang in the 2000s found yellow flint leaf stone in ash pits and tombs, at least 18, of which 9 were M17 and 5 were H266 (Figures 4 and 5).
Excavations at the Baligang site in Dengzhou, a neighboring county of Huaichuan, have found 47 pieces of stone leaf stones, all from early tombs and ash pits of the Yangshao culture, but most of them are found in tombs, of which 6 tombs are buried with 4 to 5 pieces [8] (Figure 6).
The stone leaf stone hammers excavated from the excavations of Xiawanggang and Baligang have consistent characteristics. The raw materials are yellow, yellow-gray or gray-white flint, with the typical prismatic stone leaf core process to produce a sharp stone leaf blank at the far end, and then on both sides of the proximal end to strike out the stone collar part of the machine, individually trim one side or both sides, so that the two sides of the back ridge of the stone are symmetrical, some seem to have to break off the overly thick back ridge part, and the final product as a whole is mostly willow leaf shaped. The length of the device is generally 4 to 8, and the width is generally 1 to 2 cm. Of the 12 stone mounds published in Xiawanggang with pictures or photographs, the stone leaves all have only one ridge, at least 2 of which are "Y" shaped (from M17), T6H259:2 has obvious trimmed scars on one side, and M17 has a back ridge knocked off. Baligang M161:18 and M161:20 have two dorsal ridges, but at the distal end, they are combined into one, which can also be said to be a "Y" ridge, and the M161:19 side strikes the back to the back to make the trim marks obvious.
The size and style of the Stone Leaf Stone In Xiawanggang and Baligang Stone Leaf Stone Hammers are exactly the same as those collected from the Danjiangkou Reservoir Area, regardless of the raw materials, stone leaf generation technology, stone leaf processing technology, or the size and style of the final product. If the stone hammers from the Xiawanggang, Baligang cultural layers and ash pits may also be mixed from earlier piles, a large number of stone leaf stone hammers as burial products can only be products of the time, and cannot be backfilled soil from tombs, because Yangshao tombs have always had the tradition of burial bows, whether it is the first and second phases of the Yangshao culture in Xiawanggang or the early tombs of Yangshao in Baligang, they are also buried with grinding stone hammers and bone hammers, and there are many tombs with more than one stone leaf stone hammer, and the most Xiawanggang M17 has 9 pieces. A number of stone leaf stone hammers are generally out together (figure 7), which should be installed with arrow shafts and placed together in the arrows.
Xiawanggang Yangshao culture phase I, phase II and baligang Yangshao culture early at the same time, but also the largest number of stone leaf stone excavation period, the age of the third phase of xiawanggang is equivalent to the middle and late Yangshao culture, but the 5 pieces seen are not out of the tomb, baligang Yangshao middle to late early period there are houses and tombs, but the tombs are not stone tools, of course, there are no stone hammers, therefore, the source of the stone leaf stone hammers excavated in the third phase of the lower Wanggang Yangshao culture is not clear enough. In short, the age of the stone leaf stone in Xiawanggang and Baligang can be clearly confirmed to belong to the early Yangshao culture, and it is uncertain whether it can be late to the middle and late Yangshao culture. In the upper reaches of the Han River, a number of Site materials from the Qujialing Culture period have been excavated and published, and no stone leaf stone or other stone leaf products have been found, which shows that the flint stone tool age of the Coexistence of the Shangyin Machuan Site and the Qujialing Culture Pottery Pieces is doubtful, and this site is likely to also have early remains of the Yangshao culture.
Although the excavation of the Neolithic sites of Xiawanggang and Baligang has only found a stone leaf technology product, it does not prove that the stone leaf products collected in the Danjiangkou reservoir area other than the stone leaf products also belong to the Yangshao culture period, but because the various stone leaf products in Xiawanggang and Boshan are likely to come from the Neolithic accumulation, the possibility of these stone products belonging to the same period is very large. However, the stone leaf products are often out of the tomb and are easy to identify, so they have been valued by the excavators, collations and reports, and other stone leaf products are very small and difficult to collect without special attention.
The stone leaf stone hammers excavated from the xiawanggang and Baligang should be finished products for the tombists, and most of the discarded fragments in the cultural layer and ash pits should be the place of consumption. Boshan and other places not only found stone leaf stone cores, but also found primary stone leaves with stone skin, chicken crown stone leaves and a large number of stone leaf blanks, which is the production location of stone leaf products. In addition, the first phase of the Yangshao culture in Xiawanggang has a large number of stone products related to stone tool making, so it is considered to be a stone tool workshop, and one of these stone products is a stone hammer, which may also be a stone leaf stone hammer (the Lower Wanggang Yangshao culture also has a kind of ground shale flat stone hammer). Therefore, the area around the Danjiangkou reservoir area should not only have the origin of flint, but also certainly the origin of the early Stone Leaf Stone In Yangshao. The Baligang is already in the hinterland of the Nanyang Basin, in the plain area, there is no flint raw materials, but only the consumption place of stone leaf stone. Here we can see the circulation of stone leaf products from production to consumption in the early Yangshao culture.
Third, compared with other regional Neolithic stone leaf and fine stone leaf technology
From the Neolithic to the Bronze Age, throughout much of Eurasia, stone leaf and fine stone leaf technology has always existed, the technical system is roughly similar to the late Paleolithic period, and there are also particularly large stone leaves after the Pre-Ceramic Neolithic A stage (PPNA) in West Asia. The same tradition is also found in northeast, northern and even southwestern China, which is close to the steppes of Eurasia, and the northeast and north regions continue to the Bronze Age and even later, but the stone leaf technology descending from the Neolithic period in China is not as developed as in the central and western Parts of Eurasia. As early as the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic, stone leaf stone hammers appeared in Northeast Asia, and the newly excavated Stone Leaf Stone Hammers at the Xiaonanshan Site in Raohe River are nearly 9,000 years old. Since then, Neolithic stone leaf stone moths are still mostly found in northeast China[10], such as the Mishan Xinkailiu site, which is similar to the Yangshao culture era,[11] but it is difficult to relate to the discovery of Yangshao culture in the Han River Basin.
In the northwestern region of Yangshao cultural distribution, six flint stone products were excavated from the second phase of the Qin'an Dadiwan site and the site, including fine stone leaf stone core 3, scraper 2 and stone leaf trowel, of which the stone leaf trowel was 3.5 cm long and 1.3 cm wide, without collar, and the scraper was also like stone leaf products (Fig. 8)[12], although the site also had fine stone tool remains from the late Paleolithic period[13], but 2 fine stone cores and 1 scraper were from the site F245. In F255 and F305, there is no sign of stone leaf products in the Paleolithic stone tools of Dadiwan, so the dating of the second phase of the Dadiwan site should be reliable. Four pieces of black flint stone leaf stone (Fig. 9) were excavated from the ash pit and house site of the third phase of the Dongguan site in Yuanqu (Fig. 9). The second phase of Dadiwan and the third phase of the ancient city of Dongguan are equivalent to the early and middle Yangshao culture, respectively, and are examples of the stone leaf technology and stone leaf stone hammer that still exist in the Yangshao culture.
If Dadiwan and the ancient city of Dongguan are still biased towards the northwest and northern regions, the predecessor of the Yangshao culture in the Central Plains, the Pei Ligang culture, has always been found in the Fine Stone Tools [15], and the most concentrated batch of fine stone tools related to the Yangshao Culture comes from the Guangyuan Zhongzipu Site in Sichuan, where tens of thousands of fine stone tools have been excavated, dating from 6800 to 6000 years ago[16], which is the early era of the Yangshao culture. Guangyuan Beitong Hanzhong, the early Neolithic culture here belongs to the old Guantai-Yangshao culture in the upper reaches of the Han River, and has a common source or close connection with the Yangshao culture in the upper reaches of the Han River. The stone leaf technology in the upper reaches of the Han River belongs to the technical system of prismatic stone core stone leaves - fine stone leaves, judging from the scale of the neutron paving fine stone tool production field, the Yangshao period in the middle and upper reaches of the Han River Basin is obviously widely used in this technical system and its products, and the existence of stone leaf technology in the upper reaches of the Han River at this time is not particularly unexpected, and it should not be the sudden invention of the Yangshao people themselves here.
IV. Conclusion
In the investigation of flint stone tools in the Danjiangkou reservoir area in the upper reaches of the Han River, a total of 9 kinds of stone leaf stone tools were collected at multiple locations, such as stone leaves, stone leaf cores, repair stone leaves, scrapers, concave defect devices, stone hammers, serrated blades, stone knives, cone drills, spear heads, and grinding stone leaf stone knives, but these stone leaf stone tools were different from the stone leaf technology products of the Paleolithic era in China. More than 100 pieces of stone leaf stone hammers have been excavated from the cultural layers, ash pits and tombs of the Yangshao culture period of the Yangshao culture period in the Xiawanggang and Baligang neolithic periods excavated locally, and these stone leaf stone hammers are exactly the same as the stone leaf stone hammers in the Danjiangkou reservoir area, which are obviously from the same production technology system. Most of the stone leaf products collected in the Danjiangkou reservoir area were found in the accumulation of Neolithic sites at the Xiawanggang and Boshan sites, so several other stone leaf products are likely to be from the Yangshao culture period. In any case, the stone hammer made of stone leaves as blanks belongs to the Yangshao culture period. Boshan and other places in the reservoir area have found stone leaf cores, chicken crown stone leaves and a large number of stone leaf blanks and other stone leaf products, Xiawanggang also has a shed for making stone leaves, which is obviously the place where stone leaves are made, so the area around the Danjiangkou reservoir area should be the production area of stone leaf stone hammers in the Yangshao period, and Baligang is in the heart of the Nanyang Basin, not the place where flint stones are produced, and there is no sign of processing and making stone leaves, which should be the place of consumption of such products.
As in other parts of Eurasia, since the late Paleolithic period of China, stone leaf technology and fine stone leaf technology have coexisted and continued to the Neolithic Age, but the fine stone leaf technology in China's Neolithic age is more widely used, the distribution location is more southern, stone leaf technology and its products are relatively rare, the Yangshao culture period stone leaf production area and stone leaf products found in the upper reaches of the Han River identified in this paper indicate that the stone leaf technology in the eastern part of Eurasia can be as late as 5,000 years ago, and can be distributed to the upper reaches of the Han River to the south.
P.S. This paper was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program: "Research on the Civilization Process in the Yangtze River Basin" (2020YFC1521603). In addition, the author thanks the useful discussions with Teachers Song Guoding, Gao Xing and Wang Youping.
(Author: Zhang Chi, Center for Chinese Archaeology, Peking University.) In addition, the annotation is omitted here, for the full version, please check "Jianghan Archaeology", No. 6, 2021)
Editor-in-charge: Duan Shushan
Audit: Diligence
Chen Lixin
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