王府井东方广场遗址石制品研究

王府井东方广场遗址出土石制品共计1098件,主要来自下文化层。除石锤、石砧和人工石块外,其他石制品的原料几乎全部为黑色燧石。石制品普遍较小,主要为小型和微型。石核数量很少,但石片占石制品总数的一半还多。碎屑在探方中的几个区域密集分布。石器加工精致,刃缘大部分都比较平齐且其上的修疤排列均匀、整齐,尤其表现在端刮器上。原料、类型与技术特点表明,东方广场遗址石制品组合属于中国旧石器时代晚期的以石片为主要特征的文化系列。这一文化系列与周口店北京猿人遗址、周口店第15地点、许家窑遗址等有较多的相似性,推测东方广场石制品组合是由中国旧石器时代早期和中期石器工业演变而来。

A Study on the Stone Artifacts from the Orient Plaza Site of Beijing

The Orient Plaza site near Wangfujing Street in Beijing was discovered at the end of 1996 and excavated during the following eight months.Two cultural horizons were identified from the fluvial-lacustrine sediments.More than 2000 cultural relics were unearthed from the site,including stone and bone artifacts,fossils,hematite powder,fire use remains,and plant root and foliage.A total of 1098 stone artifacts were collected from the site,Among them,1027 were from the lower cultural horizon and 71 pieces from the upper cultural horizon.The stone assemblage consists of hammers,anvils,chunks,cores,flakes,and formal tools including scrapers,points,burins and borers.The general characteristics of the stone assemablge are as follows:1) Stone artifacts from both horizons have similar features in raw materials,types and technology,so they should belong to one industrial tradition.2) Most stone artifacts are made on black fine chert pebbles,and account for more than 99% of all stone pieces.3) Most of the stone artifacts are small,under 50 mm in length.4) Flakes of many types(ones with natural platforms,scarred platform,etc.) dominate the stone assemblage.5) Scrapers especially single-edged ones dominate the assemblage.Burins are in the second place,especially single-edged ones.Retouch is common.6) Direct hammer method was used to produce the flakes,with the bipolar method being used occasionally.It is thought that the direct hammer method was used to retouch the tools.The assemblage of the Orient Plaza site is similar to that of the Late Paleolithic sites of North China where flakes and flake tools are predominant.By comparing these artifacts with Early and Middle Paleolithic sites in this region,we believe that this stone assemblage belongs to the small stone tool tradition that prevailed throughout the Paleolithic Age of North China.