Since the discovery of the Dingcun site in 1955, the
cultural attributes of the Dingcun
Culture have not been changed too much. The
lithic assemblages unearthed from localities along the Fenhe River have been assigned to single culture. In 1990, Prof. Zhang Senshui took Loc. 54∶100 out of the Dingcun Culture and assigned it into the Small Paleolithic Tradition in North China. The article argues that adopting industry instead of the terms such as culture and tradition is
totally irrelevant. Prof. Zhang invented the term main industries to establish Chinese Paleolithic frameworks. However,his understanding of \%industry\% is
different from that used in western literatures.Such subjective or personally defined terminology will cause worse than better for scientific study, and produce tremendous confusion among colleagues.Prof. Zhang's framework for Chinese Paleolithic contains some substantial mistakes.1. It is totally misleading to establish different industries or cultures merely based on dimensional measurements of lithic artifacts.2. Dimensional attributes of a lithic assemblage might have been attributed to many elements such as raw material variation, lithic technology, utilization of tools, etc. The size of stone artifacts is determined more by their raw materials and functions rather than cultural traditions.3. Dimensional variations between different localities at the Dingcun
sites might have been caused by post-depositional dynamics rather than human behavior. Thus, lacking taphonomic analysis and relevant evidence, Prof. Zhang's explanation is totally unacceptable.4. Prof. Zhang regards his\!separate studies paradigms" of the Dingcun sites as a big achievement for Paleolithic archaeology. He has treated various Dingcun sites individually, searching for their differences, assigning them into different traditions. Based on the perspective of settlement pattern, Prof. Zhang's paradimgs is absolutely obsolete.5. According to the concept of catchment analysis, ancient groups at the Dingcun site might have occupied a territory more than the space where the sites are presently located. It can not be imagined that during the Middle Pleistocene, there were different ethnic groups who adopted different lithic industries coexisting only 800 m apart without any cultural exchange along the Fenhe River!
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