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The Chinese Upper Paleolithic: Geography, Chronology, and Techno-typology

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Abstract

This article reviews the archaeology and chronology of the Chinese Upper Paleolithic and the human fossils attributed to this period. The onset of the Upper Paleolithic in China dates to ca. 35,000–30,000 years ago and is marked by the appearance of a few body decorations and well-shaped bone tools that were added to stone tool assemblages, including core-and-flake tools in North China and cobble tools in South China. The proliferation of blade assemblages in northwest China is interpreted as the cultural impact or the physical presence of bearers of blade industries from western Eurasia. The ensuing appearance of microblade assemblages in North China by 23,000–22,000 years ago reflects the use of local siliceous crystalline nodules by a population that recognized the advantages of this raw material. At that time in South China, prehistoric artisans continued to shape their stone objects from the available flat river cobbles. During the later part of the Chinese Upper Paleolithic (ca. 21,000–10,000 BP), foragers also made bone tools, antler objects, pottery, and shell tools, which laid the technological foundations for the early Neolithic period. One difficulty in this research is that human fossils are rare. Few are well dated and morphological, cultural, and biological interpretations are hotly debated. Our review attempts to facilitate the understanding of a poorly known period in Chinese archaeology and its place in human cultural evolution.

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Acknowledgments

Tongli Qu thanks the China Scholarship Council (PRC) that allowed her to carry out part of her dissertation research at Harvard University and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for the postdoctoral stipend. Ofer Bar-Yosef thanks the America School of Prehistoric Research (Peabody Museum, Harvard University), Harvard China Fund, and Asia Center of Harvard University for funding his research in China. We thank the six anonymous reviewers who helped us improve the original manuscript and L. Barton (Pittsburg University) for his encouragement and many useful suggestions. We are grateful to A. Belfer-Cohen (Hebrew University) for her editorial comments on a previous manuscript. We are all responsible for any shortcomings of this paper. Xiaohong Wu thanks the State Ministry of Education of China for the support of the project of “Chronological Research of Modern Humans of the late Pleistocene period in China”, a major project of Humanity and Social Sciences, key research bases of MOE (No.10JJD770015).

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  1. School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Tongli Qu & Youping Wang

  2. Research Center for Chinese Archaeology and the School of Archaeology & Museology, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Xiaohong Wu

  3. Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Ofer Bar-Yosef

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  1. Tongli Qu
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Correspondence to Ofer Bar-Yosef.

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Qu, T., Bar-Yosef, O., Wang, Y. et al. The Chinese Upper Paleolithic: Geography, Chronology, and Techno-typology. J Archaeol Res 21, 1–73 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-012-9059-4

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