藏北高原各听石器初步观察

各听石器采自藏北高原色林错东南岸古湖滨基岩岗丘上,由硅质岩打制的边刮器、凹缺刮器、端刮器、石核和石片组成,时代可能为旧石器时代晚期或新石器时代。

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATION ON GETING SITE IN NORTH TIBET

The locality to be discussed and designated as Geting site (Fig. 1) was discovered during the investigation for Quaternary geology and environment of Qinghai-Tibet plateau by the team of Institute of Geomechanics of Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in 1983. More than 100 pieces of stone artifacts were collected. They include 21 side-scrapers, 17 notches, one end-scraper, 6 cores, 64 flakes and some wastes. The raw materials are siliceous rock pebbles which are come from the gravels near by. According to observation, the simple direct percussion method was applied in the flaking process. There is no trace of preparing platform either on cores or on flakes. All of the implements were retouched by flakes. The working edges on them are rather sinuous (Fig. 3). Like most of the sites which were dicovered in Tibet area up to now and classified to the early stage of Stone A.ge (Table 1), the stone artifacts of Geting were collected from the surface of the site. The lack of associated fauna and reliable data for determining age makes it difficult to conclude the age of the stone industry. However, the principles of geology and geomorphlogy can grovide some possiblities for us to serve the problem, The Geting site is a limestone hill which is located on the southeast shore of Selincuo Lake, the second big sal-twater lake in North Tibet plateau. The total area of the lake is about 1865 km2 with an elevation of 4530 m of the lake level. Since Late Pleistocene the lake has been fallen into a course of intermittent falling because of strong uplifting of the plateau and retreating of the gracier. As a result, a wide lake-floor plain with many lake-terraces which consist of sand and pebbles had been made (Fig. 2). The Geting limestone hill lies at 133 m above the lake level and may be part of the high lake-terrace which had been formed in the Late Pleistocene or Early Holocene. In other words, the age oi Geting industry may be set to the Late Paleo-lithic or Neolithic.