Levallois and non-Levallois blade production at Shuidonggou in Ningxia, North China

The Shuidonggou site is one of the most important for prehistoric research in China, yielding evidence of ancient human colonisations in North China during the Late Upper Pleistocene. Situated in the Ordos desert, it was first discovered and excavated by Teilhard de Chardin during the first half of the 20th century. He noted the originality of the lithic assemblages produced on blades and flakes, comparable to the Upper Palaeolithic in Western Europe. This open-air site in loess context dates from ca. 17,000 to 25,000 BP and may be earlier than 30,000 BP. The principal objective of this paper is to present the technical aspects of the Shuidonggou lithic assemblages using a technological approach based on the dynamic analysis of blanks and cores in a global overview of the chaîne opératoire concept. The goal is to understand the knapping strategies used: were both Levallois and non Levallois methods used? The importance of Shuidonggou is thus linked with the question of the use of the Levallois method.