About.com: How do you analyze the data?
Gary Feinman: Once we have the information from each collection and determine the basic size of each site in each phase, we have the basic information that we need to prepare a phase-by-phase sequence of maps for the surveyed area. These maps are the empirical basis from which to assess and analyze spatial and temporal settlement pattern changes/variation over time. We also code two sets of data in the computer. One includes the artifact information from all collections, while the other is the information recorded at each site. The latter includes topographic location, nature of the sediment, access to water, modern use, other archaeological features, such as walls or platforms, etc.
About.com: What kinds of things have you learned from your China surveys?
Gary Feinman: We have learned that regional archaeological survey can be systematically implemented in China with significant results. To summarize, I think we have a far better perspective on the long-term history of this region of eastern Shandong Province. We see that there was relatively little use of or occupation in this area until the latter part of the Neolithic (the phase just prior to Longshan times). Once the area was settled, sites increased rapidly in number and size. People may have settled coastal Shandong when sea levels receded, making farming easier to implement than it would have been earlier, when the coast may have been more apt to flood. The in-migrants likely arrived with village-scale social organization and a suite of agricultural resources. Excavations by our team members and other archaeologists indicate that these coastal farmers grew a variety of crops, including rice and foxtail millet.
During the Longshan period, Liangchengzhen became the head town of a complex polity and a multi-tiered settlement system, perhaps an early state. The organization in the Middle and Late Longshan periods was seemingly more hierarchical (with larger settlements and denser populations) than was believed when we began. It was one of several polities in this coastal region that seem to have developed with only limited contact at the time with the Yellow River Basin to the west. Eventually, these polities broke down and this part of coastal Shandong appears eventually to have come under the hegemony of centers that were based outside our study region. Based on our archaeological findings and documents, the Qin emperor established a new capital in the northern part of this coastal basin during the 3rd century BC. Soon thereafter, the region was incorporated into the Han Empire, as a producer of salt, a highly valued good at that time.
