Raw material economies and mobility patterns in the Late Paleolithic at Shuidonggou locality 2, north China

•This paper addresses variation in lithic raw material economy within the Late Paleolithic sequence at Shuidonggou locality 2, north China.•The stratigraphic sequence documents nearly 14,000 years of the Late Paleolithic, with evident for changes in raw material procurement and exploitation, mobility pattern and territory use.•Shifts in raw material economy at Shuidonggou locality 2 are argued to represent responses to changes in residential mobility and the scale/duration of occupations at the site itself: data on cultural features and foraging strategies provide independent evidence for shifts in site use.•Residential mobility along rivers and surrounding riparian zones proposed at Shuidonggou locality 2 provides an explanation for the characteristics of lithic technology in north China: river channels represent a context where distributions of stone and food coincide, great investment in transported chipped stone technology has few advantages in terms of either time or transport budgets and consequently simple technology might prevail.

This paper addresses variation in lithic raw material economy within the Late Paleolithic sequence at Shuidonggou locality 2, north China. The stratigraphic sequence documents nearly 14,000 years of the Late Paleolithic, with evidence for changes in raw material procurement and exploitation, mobility pattern and territory use. Although raw materials are generally similar throughout the sequence, the ways local materials were exploited changed over time. There is also evidence for increased exploitation of more distant sources in some cultural layer. Shifts in raw material economy at Shuidonggou locality 2 are argued to represent responses to changes in residential mobility and the scale/duration of occupations at the site itself: data on cultural features and foraging strategies provide independent evidence for shifts in site use. Results have implications on more appropriate approaches to investigate the adaptive dimensions of simple core-flake technologies in north China from a cost/benefit perspective.