Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 49 (4) 2021   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2021.49.4.003-014

Annotation:  The Early Paleolithic Go Da Site and the Bifacial Lithic Industries of Southeast Asia Paleolithic Personal Ornaments from Xiaogushan Cave: The Formation of Early Symbolism and Its Region A Multidisciplinary Study of Burnt Deposits at Surungur, Fergana Valley, Southern Kyrgyzstan Handles of Early Iron Age Cauldrons from Southwestern Siberia The Pazyryk Style Burial of a Hunnic Period Noblewoman at Karakabak, Mangystau, Kazakhstan Integrative Geophysical Studies at the Novaya Kurya-1 Cemetery in the Kulunda Steppe Reconstructed Paleodiets and Subsistence Strategies of the Central Ciscaucasian Population (1000 BC Archaeological Evidence of Migration from the Southern Taiga of Western Siberia to the Urals in the Hephthalite Coin from an Early Medieval Burial at Gorny-10, Northern Altai Kainar: A Late 18th to Early 20th Century Ritual and Housing Complex in the Northern Ustyurt Tungus-Manchu Traditional Beliefs. Part 2: Zoomorphic Complex Urbanization of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia and the Far East (20th to Early 21st Centuries) Patterns in the Population History of Northern Eurasia from the Mesolithic to the Early Bronze Age,   

The Early Paleolithic Go Da Site and the Bifacial Lithic Industries
of Southeast Asia

A.V. Kandyba¹, A.M. Chekha¹, Nguyen Gia Doi², Nguyen Khac Su², S.A. Gladyshev¹, and A.P. Derevianko¹

¹Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

²Institute of Archaeology, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, Phan Chu Chin 61, Hanoi, Vietnam

The lithic industry of the stratified site Go Da in Central Vietnam is described, and its place among the contemporaneous Early Paleolithic sites of East and Southeast Asia is determined. Results of a morphological techno-typological analysis of the Go Da assemblage are provided. Go Da is attributed to the An Khe-type sites situated in the eponymous area of Vietnam. Cores and tools were made from pebbles, less often from flakes. Primary reduction focused on simple pebble cores with natural striking-platforms, whereas radial cores were less common. Predominant among the tools are picks, scrapers of various modifications, choppers, and chopping tools, as well as denticulate and notched tools; also, bifaces occur. These tools belong to a single homogeneous industry, showing common features in primary reduction, preparation, and design of key artifacts. On the basis of analysis of the stratigraphic sequence of Go Da and the absolute date of 806 ± 22 ka BP, generated by the potassium-argon analysis of tektites, it is proposed that the site is older than other dated locations with the An Khe industry. Apparently, it resulted from a convergent evolution of the pebble-flake industry introduced by the first wave of Homo erectus from Africa. Go Da and other An Khe sites likely belong to a vast habitation zone of Southeast Asian hominins with technologically and typologically similar industries dating to the boundary between the Lower and the Middle Pleistocene.

Keywords: Vietnam, Early Paleolithic, An Khe industry, handaxes, bifacial tools