Abstract
The terminal Pleistocene witnessed significant paleoclimatic changes that influenced the adaptive behavior of human populations. Situated in the tropical-subtropical zone of Southwest China, a newly excavated cave site, Fodongdi, revealed evidence for substantive changes in technology between 18.37 to 13.85 cal ka BP. Here, we present the results of a technological analysis on lithic assemblage formation across three main sequential phases at Fodongdi Cave. Diachronic changes in lithic technology document the co-existence of diverse reduction techniques and toolkits, corresponding with climatic fluctuations over a five-thousand-year period.
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Data Availability
All the artefacts referred to in this study are curated in the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing and Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics andArchaeology, Kunming. All other relevant data are available in the main text or the accompanying Supplementary Information.
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Acknowledgements
Financial support for this research was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42177424,41888101), National key R&D projects (2022YFF0801502), the Key Research Program of the Institute of Geology & Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS-201905), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2020074), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (E2E40409X2), and Griffith University funding to MP. We thank Wang Han for suggestions on Fig. 12, and we thank Li Jingya for data collection.
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S.X.Y., F.G. and X.Q.L. obtained funding and initiated the project; X.Y.Z., F.G., Q.J.R., K.L.Z. and Y.R.W. conducted field excavation and site sampling; X.Y. Z., K.L.Z. and X.Q.L. conducted stratigraphic, dating and paleoenvironmental studies; Y.X.Z. and J.X.W. analyzed the source of raw materials; F.X.H., S.X.Y., J.P.Y., Y.R.W., S.W.P. and M.P. analyzed the stone artefacts; and S.X.Y., F.X.H and M.P. wrote the main text and supplementary materials with specialist contributions from the other authors.
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Huan, FX., Yang, SX., Gao, F. et al. Technological diversity in the tropical-subtropical zone of Southwest China during the terminal Pleistocene: excavations at Fodongdi Cave. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 16, 25 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-023-01928-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-023-01928-9