New Data on Stone Industries of Late Pleistocene – Early Golocene Period on the Territory of Northern Vietnam

Abstract

Purpose. Since the 1970s, about a dozen caves and rock shelters have been discovered and explored in the limestone massifs of the Cuc Phuong National Park (North Vietnam), in which stone artifacts, human remains and animal bones belonging to the late Paleolithic-Neolithic period have been found. Archaeological research of the 2012 joint Russian-Vietnamese archaeological expedition extended the list of archaeological sites with a newly discovered cave Diem with a large number of stone products, the complex of faunal and anthropological material. The height of the cave Diem above sea level is 100 m, the entrance is oriented to the North-East. The illuminated entrance part of the cave has a tube-like shape about 30 m long and 5 to 10 m wide. Extending deep into the limestone massif in the form of karst cavities, the cave has a total area of about 500 m². Results. In 2013, the site explored in 2012 had the excavation area of 5 m². In 2014, the area of the excavation was expanded in the North-West direction by 3 m², thus the total of the investigated area was 9 m². In addition to the mechanically mixed upper layer, which included multi-temporal cultural remains, three large cultural and lithological units, numbering 2 118 stone artifacts belonging to the late Paleolithic – Neolithic were identified during the excavation work. In the first cultural-lithological division, there were 39 fragments of ceramics along with stone products. The anthropological material found is represented by a cluster of highly charred and fragmented human bones, presumably of one person. In layer 2, apart from the stone products researchers found a burial of a man whose bone remains were fragmented but were not exposed to fire, as in layer 1. In the roof of layer 3, there was discovered a burial of a woman. More than 1000 bone fragments of reptiles, birds and mammals were collected within the two lower cultural-lithological units. Conclusion. The ceramics found in layer 1 of the Diem cave allows us to correlate it with the Neolithic culture of Da But, whose period of existence varies in the range of 7000-4000 ka. A powerful block horizon located in layer 2 indicates a strong earthquake whose traces are observed in the same stratigraphic conditions in all the caves of the region under study. The absence of ceramics in cultural unit 2 can be attributed to the early Holocene period (about 10 000 ka). The estimated age of layer 3 of the Diem cave is currently difficult to define. Based on preliminary results, we can suppose that this location belongs to cave sites of the commune Thanh Yen, such as Con Moong and Mang Chieng. Culturally and chronologically it corresponds to the culture of Hoa Binh.