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The lithic assemblage from Shizitan 29, a late Upper Paleolithic open-air site in Shanxi, China, provides evidence for the earliest, well-dated microblade production in East Asia, ca. 26/24 Ka cal BP. To pursue a behavioral rather than traditional typological understanding of this key adaptive technology, we apply a techno-functional approach that enables us to reconstruct the entire operational sequence in behavioral terms through the derivation of technical objectives. This methodology can serve as a model to be applied to other assemblages for greater understanding of the origins and spread of the broadly distributed eastern Asian Late Pleistocene microblade industries. Within the eight cultural layers at Shizitan 29, microblade production abruptly appears at the top of Layer 7 following earlier core-and-flake production, supporting hypotheses of microblade technology arising within adaptive strategies to worsening Late Glacial Maximum environments. Significantly, reconstruction of the operational sequence supports microblade technology being introduced into the North China Loess Plateau from regions further north. It also allows us to re-think microblades’ relationship in behavioral terms with earlier limited examples of East Asian blade production and the evolution and spread of microblade technology, providing new insights into the adaptive relationships between subsequent microblade productions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An eyed bone needle fragment found in Shizitan 29 site, Shanxi Province, dated to ca . 23–26 ka cal BP, is one of the early needles with a precise stratigraphic context and date among the open-air Palaeolithic sites in North China. Although the needle was found broken, based on microwear observation and experiments in making and using bone needles, we conclude that it had been used for sewing. Further archaeological evidence, including a sandstone needle-shaping stone, drilling tools, perforated ornaments, and microscopic evidence of thread, support the presence of a bone needle at the Shizitan 29 site. It was the same type as the bone needles used in Siberia during the Late Pleistocene, and the use of needles at Shizitan was one of the strategies for making warm clothes to adapt to the coming of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 24,000–18,000 cal BP). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]