The Study on the Forty-Eight Heights Site and its Net Sinkers

The 48-Heights Site, located on the coastal dune of northeastern Hualien city, is a new archaeological site discovered in 2012. Since the requirement of cultural asset evaluation before the National Culture Park of Sculpture, and no archaeological information about this area has been record, the Department of Anthropology, NTU, executed the excavations during October, 2012 and January, 2013.

Based on the process of excavation and the data compilation, we can have some knowledge about the 48-Heights Site. The main remains of the 48-Heights Site contain lots of pottery containers, especially ceramic pots, and a large number of chipped flakes and net sinkers are also characteristic of this site. The 48-Heights Site can be dated to 3,637-3,353 B.P., and its cultural deposits belong to Eastern Jomon-Pottery Culture. Moreover, according to the culture deposits of this site and its location, we can also reasonably suppose that people lived in 48-Heights might lead their lives by fishing.

On the other way, the large number of net sinkers with different kinds and shapes is good material for us to discuss the probability of manufacturing standardization. This thesis suggests that the different shape and weight of net sinkers both play important roles and have different functions in fishing activities, in addition, the measure value, length, width, thickness, waist, and weight, will also present significant difference.

After distributing the net sinkers into different groups according to their weights and shapes, and analyzing all the measure value of the net sinkers with some statistical analysis method. The result suggests that different group of net sinkers have significant difference on their measure value. Therefore, the result can support the suggestion that people lived in the 48-Heights might manufacture different shapes of net sinkers according to their different functions.

This thesis may not able to get rid of the traditional mode of assuming the pattern of occupation through the archaeological remains, but still hopes to provide a better understanding of prehistoric occupation technique of the 48-Heights Site.