Analyzing the survival adaptive behaviors of ancient humans in the prehistoric Xiajiang area by unearthed stone artifacts from the Daxi site

<sec> <p indent="0mm">Stone artifacts are valuable resources for researching prehistoric human technical activities, sustenance economics, and cultural society. Following extensive examinations and excavations, a vast number of tombs, ash pits, ceramic kilns, cooking stoves, and other artifacts from various eras have been discovered at Daxi site, with Daxi culture tombs and ash pits being the most plentiful. Excavation works have yielded hundreds of thousands of cultural relics made of diverse materials, including pottery, stone objects, jade, bones, teeth, mussels, and so on, with stone artifacts and pottery accounting for the great bulk. </sec> <sec> The research object of this paper is the new stone artifacts obtained from the fourth excavation of the Daxi site by the Chongqing Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute from 2000 to 2003, which included both ground stone tools and knapping stone tools, as well as a large number of cores, flakes, chunks, gravel, and other stone artifacts that had been neglected for a long time. </sec> <sec> The paper uses methods of mathematical statistics and analysis, technology-function analysis, and causal correlation analysis to analyze the source and obtainment of raw materials, flaking technology and products, lithic technology and Chaîne Opératoire, use and abandonment, type and assemblage, shape and size, unearthed and background, and periodization of unearthed stone artifacts at the Daxi site. Furthermore, the subsistence economy and social structure of Daxi site is addressed. </sec> <sec> According to the discovery, the lithic industry at the Daxi site is different from cobble-tools system in the southern China, with paleolithic heritage and remains but greater Neolithic lithic handicraft industry specialized growth. Due to the area’s unique environmental resources, the subsistence economy is mostly manifested in the compound subsistence economy type, which was inherited from the “broad spectrum adaptation” in the Upper Paleolithic. The social organization should be a small, isolated colony that is relatively simple and stable, with no evident hierarchical differentiation. It should operate autonomously within the context of the social division of labor and identity. It has distinctive spiritual beliefs and cultural practices. </sec>