Animal fossils in archaeological sites are closely related to human activities. The environment and human activities, such as hunting-selection, cook process, traditional culture and habits can be partly inferred from the variety of fauna, fragmentation of the bones, and the human marks on bones' sur-faces. So far, researches about marks on fossils are few in China, and are mainly observed directly by eyes. Light Microscopes and Scanning Electron Microscopes are also applied to the observation abroad. These methods could provide us a lot of information, but are mainly confined to 2 dimensions. In this paper, we analyze human marks on the surface of animal fossils through three dimensions re-construction and isoline analysis, which enable us observe and measure in 3 dimensions. This method gives us a lot of information as follows: the formation of the marks, the tools that produced the marks, the cutting edge, movement and micro-abrasion of the tools. Through study of human marks on the surface of animal fossils unearthed from Bailongdong Cave in Yunxi, Hubei Province, we have got the characteristics of the marks, and further deepen cognition of the cutting edge, cutting orientation, cut-ting sequence, as well as micro-abrasion of tools during the formation of these marks. This is the first to use virtual three dimensions reconstruction in studying the human marks on the surface of animal fossils in China.
Since 2004, three excavations have been carried out at a late Pleistocene human fossil site of Huanglong Cave in Yunxi County, Hubei Province of China, which unearthed seven human teeth, dozens of stone tools, mammal fossils and other evidence indicating human activities. During the third excavation in 2006, in the same layer as the human teeth, we found some patches of black materials embed- ded in the deposit. We doubted that this black deposit layer is the remains of burning or even human use of fire at the cave. To further explore the possibility of human fire use at the Huanglong Cave, we examined samples directly taken from the black deposit layer and compared them with samples taken from several places in the cave using three methods: micromorphology, element content determination and deposit temperature analysis. Our results indicate that the contents of carbon element in the black deposit reach 64.59%―73.29%. In contrast, contents of carbon element of the comparative samples from other parts in the cave are only 5.82%―9.49%. The micromorphology analysis of the black deposit samples reveals a plant structure like axial parenchyma, fibrocyte, uniseriate ray and vessel. High-temperature magnetic susceptibility measurements suggest that the stratum possibly underwent a high temperature in the nature. Based on these lab analyses, we are sure that the black layer in the Huanglong Cave is the remains of fire and combustion did occur in the cave 100000 years ago. Taking other evidence of human activities found in the Huanglong Cave into consideration, we believe that the evidence of fire from the Huanglong Cave was caused by the human activities of controlled use of fire.
LIU WuWU XianZhuLI YiYinDENG ChengLongWU XiuJiePEI ShuWen
