Helong Dadong Site

Helong Dadong Site

The Helong Dadong site is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The Helong Dadong Paleolithic site is located in Dadong Village, Chongshan Town, Helong City, Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Jilin Province. The site is situated on the eastern foothills of China’s Changbai Mountain, on the left bank of the upper reaches of the Tumen River, which forms the border between China and North Korea. It is located on a gentle basalt plateau at the confluence of the Tumen River and its tributary, the Hongqi River, about 80 kilometers west of Changbai Mountain’s Tianchi Lake and roughly 40 kilometers north of Helong City.

The site was discovered during a field survey in September 2007. It is situated on a third-level terrace on the right bank of the Tumen River, with an artifact distribution area covering 1 million square meters. The surface features a large number of stone artifacts made primarily from obsidian, totaling around 20,000 pieces. The archaeological team conducted a trial excavation over an area of 49 square meters, unearthing approximately 3,000 stone artifacts, including microblades, microblade cores, scrapers, flakes, and others. Over 90% of the lithic materials were obsidian. It can be preliminarily determined that this is a late Paleolithic microblade industry site dating back around 10,000 years.

In June 2010, the Jilin Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology carried out a formal field excavation of the site. The excavation area in 2010 was 50 square meters. The cultural layer was uniform in nature, with only a late Paleolithic cultural layer remaining beneath the surface soil. Unearthed stone artifacts included anvil stones, cores, flakes, blades, blade cores, microblade cores, microblades, burins, end-scrapers, points, spearheads, bifacial tools, and other types, totaling 1,030 stone tools. At the bottom of the cultural layer, small patches of red burned soil, charcoal fragments, animal bone remains with signs of burning, and one finely processed and partially polished horn cone-shaped stone tool were also found. The primary methods of stone tool processing were direct hammering, followed by battering; other techniques included pressure flaking and indirect percussion. Processing styles varied, with direct percussion being the most common, and full-body retouching used to a certain extent. Around the anvil stones unearthed in the excavation area, researchers also found stone chips, ashes, and a small number of fossilized animal bones.

The enormous scale of the site first provides abundant physical material for understanding its cultural significance; secondly, due to its favorable natural environment—such as the broad, flat plateau, abundant flora and fauna resources, and rich lithic raw materials—human activity in the region became increasingly frequent, leading to a surge in the population supported by the site, making it a center of late Paleolithic human activity in Northeast Asia; thirdly, if settlement pattern archaeological analysis is conducted to understand the overall layout and functional zoning of the site, it will play an important role in studying the social organization structure of the time.

In 2019, the Helong Dadong site was listed in the eighth batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units.

Dadong Village: Dadong Village…… More details about Dadong Village++

Further Reading:

· Eighth Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units