Site formation processes at Donggutuo: a major Early Pleistocene site in the Nihewan Basin, North China

Understanding site formation processes is crucial for interpreting archaeological context patterns and hominin behaviour as these affect the preserved condition of a site and the integrity of archaeological remains. The fluvio-lacustrine sequences in the Nihewan Basin of North China are rich sources of early Pleistocene archaeological sites, which offer an important opportunity to investigate human evolution and adapted behaviours in East Asia. Although many Palaeolithic sites have been reported from the Nihewan Basin, North China, few of them focus on site formation processes before interpreting the hominin behaviour patterns. Here, we present a site formation study of four archaeological layers (Layers 6D, 6C, 6B and 6A) in Trench 1 from the Donggutuo (namely DGT-T1) site in the Nihewan Basin with an age of 1.1 Ma. Through the study of sedimentary contexts, spatial distributions of artefacts and fossils, intra-assemblage category ratios, debitage size distributions, lithic abrasion, artifact orientation and planar dip, our results show that all the layers had been disturbed by low-energy sheet wash across the lake shore setting, but to differing extents. The post-depositional disturbance caused by water decreased from the lower to the upper layers, from Layer 6D to Layer 6A. This indicates that the archaeological remains in DGT-T1 have not been subject to significant natural modifications and are thus suitable for studying early hominin behaviour in North China.