Chinese archaeologists have unearthed a collection of 37 stone artifacts at three new localities near the Liuhuaishan, an important early Paleolithic site in the Bose Basin.

The new finds, described in a paper in the latest issue of Acta Anthropologica Sinica, will help better understand the human behavior at prehistoric open-air sites in south China.

The archaeologists found stone cores, flakes, chunks, choppers and chopping tools, and picks, mainly made of quartzite, silicarenite and siltstone.

The size of all artifacts was large and most of the tools were retouched on pebbles. Their characteristics show very strong ties with the pebble tool tradition of south China.

Soil stratigraphy and the dating of tektites suggest that the newly discovered archaeological localities were formed in the early stage of Middle Pleistocene.

The archaeologists said that these localities are buried in the same layer of vermiculated red soil, and that preliminary analysis shows the localities have similar features, distribute across a broad area and span a limited range of time.

“With these details, a future project with a good stratigraphic and chronological control will be conducted to study the human behavior at open-air sites in south China”, concluded paper co-author Xing Gao, a professor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.