For Immediate Release Media contact: The Field Museum Greg Borzo 312/665-7106 gborzo@fieldmuseum.org “Scientific archaeology was introduced into China during the 1920s, and during the 1980s, investigations about the rise of civilization increased,” said Dr. Hui Fang, Professor of Archaeology at the Center for East Asian Archaeology Studies at Shandong University and co-author of the research. “Then in the 1990s, abundant results from archaeological fieldwork made it possible to adopt new approaches such as the theory and method of settlement pattern studies to interpret the process of the beginning of civilization in areas such as Shandong province.” Expertise with the survey method has been provided by two Field Museum scientists and co-authors of the research, Dr. Gary Feinman, Curator of Mesoamerican Anthropology, and Linda Nicholas, Adjunct Curator of Anthropology. They surveyed extensively for archaeological sites in Oaxaca, Mexico, before joining the Shandong survey team. “When we began the project in China, systematic regional surveys had already proven to be an empirical key for understanding and evaluating the rise of and changes in early civilizations in highland Mexico, the Andean region, and the Near East,” Feinman said. “Since then, two prominent scholars have called the advent of settlement pattern studies across the world the most important breakthrough in archaeology during the second half of the 20th century.” The method is very effective, Nicholas said. “We discover and map many ancient sites on a daily basis. Because so few of these sites will ever be excavated, the survey maps become the only permanent record of most ancient settlements in a region.” Over the years and centuries, human activity (such as plowing and construction) and natural processes (such as erosion) bring many ancient artifacts to the surface of the ground. Survey crews look for such evidence by walking in the late fall or early winter when crops have been harvested, increasing the visibility of objects. Crew members, who are spaced out evenly, learn to identify the characteristics (color, paste, style, etc.) of pottery sherds that indicate particular time periods. “The large-scale organization of culture can only be understood by revealing the overall layout of settlements in a region and comparing their sizes,” Underhill said. “Then one can begin to analyze other aspects of regional organization such as population density, distances between sites, and distances to water sources, all of which can reveal information about economics, trade, interactions, and other factors.” Continue>>