We are now in our final stages of this year's survey. The weather has turned blustery with a cold northwest wind, so the timing in that sense was fortuitous. Linda and I will be leaving Rizhao for Chicago via Qingdao and Beijing soon due to unanticipated personal events. Before we leave, Anne, Hui, and I are scheduled to make a presentation later today in front of dozens of local museum and government officials as well as some members of the press regarding our long-term archaeological project. On Sunday, the television report on our survey (filmed earlier) will be broadcast locally.

Once we completed the field survey a few days back, we turned our attention to the analysis of what we discovered. First, we had to complete the washing of the many bags of artifacts that we collected when we found sites. Then, Hui had to describe and date all of pottery that we had collected. During this process, I serve as the recorder, taking notes. Linda, assisted by Anne, took photographs of key artifacts, such as polished stone tools and a two-thousand-year-old Han era coin that I found at a Han site near the coast. Once the sherds had been studied, Linda had to transfer the information from the collections to the maps of the area where we walked. In that way, we could finalize our assessment of the sizes and dating of the sites that we had located and marked on the maps in the field.

The routine of analysis takes place in our Rizhao hotel so we miss the exercise and visual stimulation that we all drink in as we conduct the survey. I also miss the fellowship and gluttonous food consumption of our survey lunches, which we take at different local restaurants each day in the field. Most of these restaurants have never served foreign guests before and so they often are honored and a bit nervous to have us as clients. We have been served good food at even the smallest family-run places. Personally, I really enjoy the food we get in rural settings in coastal Shandong. Survey lunches afford me the opportunity to eat two of my favorite foods, large locally grown peanuts that are roasted in the wok and the round, baked, crusty, peasant bread, called "da bing" that you only find in the countryside. We also are especially partial to vegetable dishes, bean sprouts or squash, or a variety of spinach-like vegetables that are frequently part of our daily fare. Some of us also like a dish fixed with the 'skin' of tofu. It is almost like noodles made of tofu, and is generally prepared with strips of dried chili peppers and vegetables. Of course, after a morning of walking outside, it also always feels good to absorb the interior warmth, share the experiences and findings of the day, and sip some hot green tea while quelling the appetite.

At the same time, it is fun and informative to process the data that we have found in the field and to see how this year's results affect, and possibly alter, the patterns that we have seen based on the previous eight seasons of investigation. Based on the study of the collections, we have now confirmed our earlier suspicion that Yao Weng Cheng was roughly 300 hectares in size during the Longshan period, and so was comparable in size to Liangchengzhen. These two sites were seemingly the capitals of two Longshan era polities, and we can now endeavor to see if we can begin to determine the areal extent of their territorial domains. At the same time, we have found that the Han period occupation of coastal settings was greater than in earlier periods, supporting a pattern that we had found in the northern part of our study region as well.

I hope that many of you will take the chance to follow our investigations in Oaxaca, Mexico at the site of El Palmillo through expeditions@fieldmuseum in 2004 beginning during the later half of March.

The word of the day is "di tu," which are the two characters that signify the word "map." This specific character 'di' means 'earth,' while 'tu' refers to a 'picture' or 'drawing.' So, an 'earth picture' is a 'map.'