Yuchanyan is an early

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

cave site in

Dao County Dao County () is a county in Hunan Province, China. It is under the administration of Yongzhou prefecture-level City. Located on the southern margin of the province, it is adjacent to the northeastern border of Guangxi. The county borders to the ...

(Daoxian),

Hunan Hunan is an inland Provinces of China, province in Central China. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the Administrative divisions of China, province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to the east, Gu ...

, China. The site yielded

sherd This page is a glossary of archaeology, the study of the human past from material remains. A B C D E F ...

s of ceramic vessels and other artifacts which were dated by analysis of

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, ca ...

and bone collagen, giving a date range of 17,500 to 18,300 years old for the pottery. The pottery specimens may be the oldest known examples of pottery.'Oldest pottery' found in China
/ref> The cave yielded fragmentary remains of 2 or more ceramic vessels, in addition to large amounts of ash, a rich animal bone assemblage, cobble and flake artifacts, bone tools, and shell tools. The artifacts indicate that the cave was a Late Paleolithic foragers' camp. Here we report on the radiocarbon ages of the sediments based on analyses of charcoal and bone collagen. The best-preserved charcoal and bone samples were identified by prescreening in the field and laboratory. The dates range from around 21,000 to 13,800 cal BP. The age of the ancient pottery ranges between 18,300 and 15,430 cal BP. Charcoal and bone collagen samples located above and below one of the fragments produced dates of around 18,000. These ceramic potsherds therefore provide some of the earliest evidence for pottery making in China.

References

Neolithic China Neolithic sites of Asia History of ceramics Caves of Hunan Major National Historical and Cultural Sites in Hunan Dao County {{Hunan-geo-stub