The State Administration of Cultural Heritage held a working meeting on the important progress of the "Archaeological China" major project on the 15th, and announced five important archaeological achievements. The remains of the first and second groups of the Sitai Site in Shangyi, Hebei Province are preliminarily judged as a new archaeological culture, which is an important breakthrough in Neolithic archaeology in northern China. It provides typical and direct evidence for the study of the transition of the Paleolithic Age in northern China. It is understood that the rescue excavation of the Sitai Site began in 2015. Since 2020, with the approval of the State Administration of Cultural Relics, Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and other units have jointly carried out a new round of systematic archaeological investigation and excavation on the four sites, and important discoveries have been made recently. Zhao Zhanhu, a researcher at the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, said that the Sitai Site is a site in the early and middle Neolithic Age, with an area of about 150000 square meters. Archaeology has found more than 40 houses and unearthed more than 800 pottery, stone, bone and shellfish relics, which can be divided into five groups of cultural relics of different ages. Among them, the first and second groups contain the remains of the transition period from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic. The first group of cultural relics dates from 10400 to 10000 years ago. Six nearly square and semi-underground cave houses were found, including stone tools, fine stone tools, grinding stone tools, bone horn tools, and animal bones. Pottery includes cylindrical pots and plate tools. The second group of cultural relics dates from 9200 to 9000 years ago. Four nearly square and semi-underground cave houses were found, with pottery plate tools, stone grinders, and many bone needles and bone cones. Zhao Zhanhu said that the stratigraphic relationship between the first and second groups of cultural relics is clear, and the dating data is continuous. The group of houses demonstrated the earliest known settlement villages in northern China, showing the development and transformation of human survival mode from hunting, gathering and mobile settlement in the Paleolithic era to gradual settlement in the early Neolithic era. The fine stone industry inherits the wedge-shaped fine stone core technology tradition of more than 10000 years in the Nihewan Basin, which shows the continuity of culture and population, and provides typical and direct evidence for the transition study of the Paleolithic Age in northern China. Through carbon-14 dating of charcoal and animal bones unearthed from the sites of the first and second groups of cultural relics, a series of dating data of about 150000 years and more than 9000 years were obtained. At present, there are many kinds of plant remains and animal bones found, which indicates that the surrounding ancient environment is a mountainous grassland environment suitable for wildlife survival, and also indicates that the life mode of the ancestors of Sitai is mainly hunting economy. "The discovery of the Sitai Site is of great significance. It is preliminarily identified as the earliest Neolithic archaeological culture in northern China." Zhao Zhanhu said that as the latest demonstration of the cultural history of the northern China for ten thousand years, it not only provides important basic data for exploring the origin of dryland agriculture in northern China and the transition research of the Paleolithic period, but also an important witness of the pluralism, inclusiveness and continuity of the Chinese civilization. (Outlook New Era)
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Source：XinhuaNet
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