10-Day China Archaeology Field Methods Course: Xi'an, Anyang & Luoyang

Arrival — Welcome to Xi'an
On arrival in Xi'an, your guide and driver will welcome you at the airport with a name sign, then transfer you by private vehicle to your hotel. Your guide will assist with check-in and give a brief orientation to the city.

Afternoon — Xi'an City Wall，Calligraphy and Painting Class
The 14th-century Ming Dynasty City Wall stretches 13.7 kilometers and is one of the world's best-preserved fortifications. Its 12-meter-high ramparts, watchtowers, and arrow slits showcase ancient military ingenuity. Rent a bike to traverse its entirety, passing the South Gate's ceremonial drum performances and the willow trees along the moat.

At a local studio, learn calligraphy and Chinese painting under a master calligrapher's guidance, writing Tang poetry with traditional wolf-hair brushes. Practice characteristic strokes on rice paper, then create a personalized seal carved with your Chinese name.

Late Afternoon — Yongxingfang Food Street
This Tang-style food alley brims with Shaanxi delicacies such as Zichang pancakes (buckwheat crepes stuffed with shredded potatoes), Hulu chicken (crispy fried whole chicken), and Fuzhuan tea (aged fermented brick tea). Try the popular Smash Bowl Wine ritual — toss a clay bowl after drinking for good luck.

Evening — Dinner and Hotel Transfer

After dinner, you will be transferred to your hotel for a restful night.

Accommodation
Overnight at your hotel in Xi'an.

Morning — why stratigraphy is the whole argument
The course opens where every field school opens, with superposition: in an undisturbed deposit, each layer is younger than the one beneath it and older than the one above. In the Guanzhong basin that principle sits on an unusually deep archive, because the loess began blowing in during the Pleistocene and has been accumulating for more than two million years, with darker palaeosol bands marking the wetter intervals between the dust. That sequence gives Chinese archaeology both its dating framework and its problem: loess is soft, it stands in vertical faces for years, and it swallows a site without trace when it collapses. The morning covers natural versus cultural deposits, what a living floor looks like as against a fill, and why an excavator destroys the thing they are trying to understand - which is the reason the record is the product.

Late morning — the recording chain
The session then moves to the paperwork that carries the whole discipline. A context sheet describes one deposit or cut: its position, its shape, its boundary with the layers above and below, its soil colour read against a standard chart, its inclusions, its thickness, and the finds it produced. Boundaries are drawn in section at 1:10 and in plan at 1:20, always with a north arrow, a scale and the date. Photographs need a scale bar and a slate with the site code, the context number and the direction. Cutting-edge practice has added photogrammetry and dense three-dimensional recording, which lets a trench be re-measured after it has gone. The morning closes with the diagram that ties the sheets together: the matrix, in which each box is one event and each line is a relationship, developed as a formal method in the 1970s and now standard worldwide.

Lunch
At the venue - biang biang noodles, cumin lamb or a bowl of beef soup, which is what Xi'an eats at midday.

Afternoon — practical: record a section
Participants work in pairs on a prepared section - a tray of stacked sand, gravel, brick rubble and soil built for teaching, not a real deposit - and produce a context sheet, a 1:10 section drawing and a photographic record for each layer they can distinguish. A total station is demonstrated so that the link between the drawing and real three-dimensional coordinates is visible rather than theoretical. Dating methods are discussed at the level of what each one can and cannot answer: radiocarbon for organic material, luminescence for sediments that have been buried and bleached, and typology for ceramics where no absolute date is available. Nothing here is real excavation; the point is that the records are, and they are assessed on accuracy rather than on neatness.

Cultural Insight — rescue archaeology
Most excavation in China is not research-driven. It is salvage work carried out ahead of construction - roads, metro lines, housing, industrial parks - under a system that requires a survey before land is developed, which is why the scale of excavation is so large and the pressure to publish is so heavy. Sites are frequently dug, recorded and built over within a few seasons. That reality explains the emphasis in this course on recording: the archive, not the trench, is what survives. It also explains why the discipline has moved so far towards non-destructive survey - geophysics, aerial and drone photography, surface collection under licence - for the first pass at any new area.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
In Xi'an.

Morning — Shaanxi Archaeological Museum
Start your day at the Shaanxi Archaeological Museum, dedicated to the story of archaeology in the region and home to a rich collection of historical and cultural artifacts. It opened to the public in 2022 and displays finds that range from ancient pottery and bronze ware to stone inscriptions from various dynasties, arranged to show how archaeologists uncover and interpret the past. Interactive displays and detailed explanations make the museum an educational and engaging experience, and your guide will highlight the objects that reveal daily life, customs and technology in ancient China.

Afternoon — Xi'an Ancient City Wall
In the afternoon, head to the Xi'an Ancient City Wall, the most complete and best-preserved ancient city fortification in China. Built in the early Ming Dynasty and completed in 1378, it stretches 13.74 kilometers around the old city, standing 12 meters high with a base 15 to 18 meters thick. Watchtowers, parapets and crenellations form a complete set of military facilities, making it a marvel of ancient engineering. You can walk along the top, rent a bicycle or take a sightseeing car; the South Gate (Yongning Gate) is the most popular entrance and the setting for traditional performances, and the wall offers panoramic views of both the ancient city center and the modern skyline.

Evening — Flexible Evening
The evening is yours to enjoy at your leisure in Xi'an.

Meals — Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
All three meals are included on this day.

Morning — rules first
The visit is arranged through a local heritage or research institution, and the exact site, the access conditions and the agenda are confirmed before you travel, because a working excavation can be closed, backfilled or busy at short notice. On arrival the site director sets out the constraints, and they matter more than any photograph you will take: stay on the marked walkways, never step onto or over a baulk, touch nothing including the spoil, keep away from the edges of any open face, wear the footwear you were asked to bring, carry no bags or tripods in the working area, and ask before using a camera anywhere. Metal detecting, surface collecting and the removal of any object - a sherd, a roof tile, a nail - are prohibited by law and end the visit.

Late morning — reading the site plan
A site is a grid before it is a hole. You will usually see a trench or block laid out with strings and pegs fixed to a coordinate system, with a step or baulk left standing between squares so that the stratigraphy can be read in section after the deposit has been removed. The spoil heap is not waste: it is graded by deposit, and it is sieved, dry or wet, for small finds and bone. A flotation tank may be running to recover charred plant remains from bulk samples. If a section face is being drawn, you will see how the excavators work from the top down in plan and clean the face before measuring it - the slowest and least cinematic part of archaeology, and the part that produces everything else.

Lunch
A lunch box at the site or a restaurant nearby, depending on the day's programme; participants eat away from the working area, which is also the rule for staff.

Afternoon — the finds processing station
Everything dug up arrives somewhere, and that somewhere is a table with water, trays and drying racks. The processing station shows the sequence: a bulk find is bagged in the trench with the context number written on the bag, then washed - unless a residue sample has been taken, in which case it is deliberately left dirty - then dried in the shade so that bone does not crack, then marked with the site code and context number in ink and given a coat of clear lacquer, then sorted into ceramic, bone, stone, metal, glass and shell, counted, weighed and bagged for storage. The staff will talk about sampling strategy and what each sample can be asked: plant remains from flotation, animal bone for species and butchery, charcoal for radiocarbon, sediment for luminescence. What they will not do is hand you a real find, and you should not ask.

Cultural Insight — excavation destroys its own evidence
The uncomfortable core of the discipline is that a deposit can only be excavated once. Every interpretation depends on records made by people standing in a hole in the rain, which is why recording standards, photography and the archive carry the weight they do, and why a site that is dug and never published is regarded in the field as a loss regardless of what was found. Participants should expect the site staff to be more interested in the context sheet than in the object, and to say so. The corollary is unwelcome and worth stating: a site that is excavated and then lost to a construction schedule, without the records being written up and deposited, has produced a temporary display of objects and no knowledge at all.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
In Xi'an.

Morning — Terracotta Army Museum
Delve into the enigma of the ancient underground army at the Terracotta Army Museum, where thousands of life-sized terracotta soldiers stand as a testament to history. Built to guard the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor, the site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.

Afternoon — Mini Warrior Crafting & Ancient City Wall
Visit a local craft center and learn the traditional art of crafting a mini terracotta warrior with your own hands. Then explore the ancient city wall, which has protected the inner city for more than 600 years. Strolling along the top offers a panoramic view of the city, and you have the option to rent a bicycle for a scenic ride around the wall.

Evening — At Your Leisure
The evening is yours to enjoy at your leisure in Xi'an.

Morning — Anyang and the start of field archaeology in China
Anyang is where Chinese archaeology as a field discipline began. In 1899 a scholar in Beijing recognised that the inscribed bones being sold to pharmacies as dragon bones came from an archaeological site, and from 1928 the first systematic excavations in China were carried out at the Shang capital here. Yinxu - the ruins of Yin, the last Shang capital, occupied from roughly 1300 to 1046 BC - covers about 24 square kilometres and was inscribed by UNESCO in 2006. The morning is spent at a workshop table rather than on the site, with a recording exercise built around what a field team actually produces: participants complete a context sheet for a prepared deposit, describe its boundary, colour, inclusions and thickness in writing that another person could use, and draw the section to scale.

Late morning — reading the inscriptions
Around 150,000 fragments of oracle bone have been recovered from Yinxu, carrying roughly 4,500 distinct characters of which only about 1,500 can be read with confidence. The workshop works with replicas and rubbings, not originals. Participants learn how a divination was made: hollows were cut on the reverse of a turtle plastron or ox scapula, a burning stick was applied, and the crack that ran from the hollow was read as the answer. The charge - the question - was then inscribed, and often the outcome was added afterwards, which is what makes the corpus a record of events rather than of ritual alone. The group reads a handful of characters that can still be recognised in modern script, works out the grammar of a short charge, and discusses why reading a dead writing system is slow, cumulative and contentious.

Lunch
A local restaurant; Anyang cooking is plain northern food - braised noodles, lamb, millet and steamed bread.

Afternoon — how a Shang bronze was made
The afternoon turns to the other great Shang craft. Bronzes in this period were cast, not hammered, and they were cast from piece-moulds: a clay model, a layer of clay pressed over it to take the outer moulds, the model shaved down to form the core, the moulds reassembled around the core with the gap between them defining the wall thickness, and molten bronze poured in. That method explains both the heavy decoration cast in the mould and the joins that remain visible on finished vessels. The group examines the alloy question - tin and lead added to copper in varying proportions - and the difference between ritual vessels and weapons, which were cast in different forms for different purposes. Objects from the tomb of Fu Hao, excavated in 1976 with 1,928 items, are used as the reference set.

Cultural Insight — the archive as a state record
Oracle bones are administrative documents as much as religious ones. The charges recorded at Yinxu ask about harvests, weather, hunting, warfare, illness, childbirth and the king's dreams; the answers were written down and later verified. That combination of question plus outcome makes the corpus one of the earliest sustained archives of political decision-making anywhere, and it is why the inscriptions are studied by historians of the Shang state and by linguists in equal measure. It also explains why the material is still contested: the readings depend on a small number of characters that do most of the work, and a single disputed character can move the date, the place or the meaning of an entire campaign.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
In Anyang.

Morning — Yinxu (Yin Ruins)
Yinxu is the archaeological site of the late Shang Dynasty capital (c. 1300–1046 BCE) and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Here the earliest known Chinese writing—oracle bone inscriptions—was discovered, offering a direct record of royal divination. Your guide will lead you through the Royal Tombs, the Huanbei Shang city foundations, and the Yinxu Museum, where bronze ritual vessels, jade artifacts, and chariot replicas reveal the dynasty's advanced metallurgy.

Afternoon — Chinese Characters Museum
This museum traces the evolution of Chinese writing from oracle-bone script through seal, clerical, and modern forms. A centerpiece is a full-scale replica of the Simuwu Ding, an enormous Shang bronze cauldron weighing around 875 kilograms that symbolizes royal power. Interactive exhibits and a calligraphy garden of stone-carved poems connect linguistic history with art.

Evening — Wenfeng Night Market
As night falls, explore Anyang's lively Wenfeng Night Market. Sample local specialties such as Daokou roast chicken, prized for its spiced, crispy skin, and biancai flat noodles with garlic sauce. Stalls also offer paper-cuttings and Tang-style ceramics for a taste of regional craft.

Morning — the storeroom behind the gallery
A museum's collection is mostly not on display. The visit is arranged through a local heritage or research institution, with the exact venue and access confirmed before departure and subject to the institution's own working schedule. What participants see first is the ordinary apparatus of care: compact shelving, boxes on labelled rows, humidity and temperature monitored against a target range that is usually held between 18 and 22 degrees and 45 to 55 per cent relative humidity for a mixed collection, silica gel changed on a schedule, pest traps checked, light kept off, and a register that ties every box to a number. Metal and bone are less forgiving of damp and of swings than fired ceramic, which is why a single target is always a compromise and why conservators argue about it.

Late morning — handling rules
Then the rules, which are again more important than anything seen: no one handles an object without permission from the curator present; ceramic and glass are lifted with both hands, never by a rim, handle or spout; objects are set down on a padded surface, never stacked, never slid; nitrile gloves for metal and bone, clean cotton gloves for ceramics that are stable; anything friable is supported on a padded board and moved by two people; nothing is photographed with flash, and nothing is photographed for publication without written permission. A condition note is made before and after any movement, because a break that is discovered later cannot be attributed.

Lunch
Near the institution; Luoyang's own midday food is wheat-based - noodles, steamed buns and soup - rather than the rice of the south.

Afternoon — the sherd table
The afternoon is spent at a sorting table with teaching material, not with accessioned objects. Ceramics arrive dirty and are first washed - except where residue sampling requires otherwise - then dried on trays in the shade, then marked with the site or accession number in ink and sealed with a thin coat of clear lacquer. Sorting is by fabric first (earthenware, stoneware, porcelain), then by surface treatment (unglazed, celadon, white ware, black glaze), then by vessel part (rim, base, body, handle), and then by form where enough of the profile survives. Quantification follows: counts by sherd, weight in grams, and the two measures that let a heap of fragments be turned into a statement about vessels - the minimum number of individuals, and estimated vessel equivalents computed from surviving rim percentages. Participants keep their own tally sheets, which are then compared across the room to show how much interpretation depends on how a fragment is classified.

Cultural Insight — Luoyang as a ceramic city
Luoyang was a capital on and off for more than a thousand years, and its ceramics track that fortune: the grey earthenwares and celadons of the Northern Wei and Sui, then the Tang sancai wares with their lead glazes in amber, green and cream, made largely for burial rather than for use. The city was sacked after the An Lushan rebellion of 755 and lost its standing as a capital for good in the early tenth century, and the kilns moved on with the court. Reading a tray of sherds here is reading that decline in fragments.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
In Luoyang.

Morning — Longmen Grottoes
Carved along the Yi River near Luoyang, the Longmen Grottoes began in 493 AD under Northern Wei Emperor Xiaowen and evolved over subsequent dynasties into a pinnacle of Chinese stone sculpture. The site holds tens of thousands of Buddhist images, blending royal patronage with folk devotion and charting a shift from religious to more secular expression. Your guide will walk you through the caves, revealing the craftsmanship and the spread of Buddhist art in China.

(Optional: Visit Luoyang Museum, one of China's earliest first-grade museums, whose building resembles a large tripodal cauldron. With over 400,000 artifacts and 11,000 on display, it offers ‘Junior Museum Curator' workshops on pottery, bronzes, and ancient crafts.)

Afternoon — Luoyi Ancient Town
After lunch, explore Luoyi Ancient Town, a cultural district on the site of a former Zhou Dynasty capital, with tree-lined streets and alleys recreating the architecture of various historical periods. As Henan's largest hub for intangible cultural heritage, it lets you experience traditional Chinese culture and witness living heritage crafts.

(Optional: Visit White Horse Temple, traditionally regarded as the first Buddhist temple established in China after Buddhism's arrival, known for its serene wooden halls and symmetrical layout.)

Evening — At Your Leisure
The evening is yours to enjoy at your leisure — you may rest at the hotel or explore the nearby surroundings on your own.

Morning — notebook presentations
Each participant presents the record they have built over the course: the context sheets, the section drawings, the sort tallies, the notes from the site visit and the workshop. Ten minutes each, with questions. The assessment criterion is the one the staff have used all week - could another person pick up this record and understand what was found and where - and the common failures are the usual ones: an unlabelled photograph, a drawing without a scale, a colour description that means something only to the person who wrote it, a tally sheet with no stated sorting rule.

Late morning — heritage law and ethics
The final session sets out the legal frame participants have been working inside. China's Cultural Relics Protection Law was first passed in 1982 and has been revised several times, most recently in 2024; excavation requires state approval and may not be carried out by private individuals or foreign teams acting independently; the export of cultural relics is prohibited; metal detecting for antiquities is illegal; and surface collection from a site is regulated in the same way as digging. The discussion then moves to the parts that are genuinely contested in the field: who owns the past a site represents, what a community should be told and when, how antiquities trafficking connects to the market in collecting, and what obligations a short foreign course has to the institution that hosted it. Records produced during the week belong to the host institution; participants keep copies only where the host has agreed in writing, and nothing from the course may be published without permission.

Lunch
A farewell lunch in Luoyang, and the last of the water banquet dishes that the city is known for.

Afternoon — departure
Transfer to Luoyang Longmen station for high-speed rail, with a connection to Xi'an in roughly an hour and a half or to Zhengzhou in about forty minutes, or by road to Zhengzhou for onward flights. Your guide confirms the train or the check-in deadline in advance and travels with the group to the departure point. Notebooks, drawings and sort tallies travel home with participants; the originals of anything produced during the placement are copied to the host institution before departure, and records supplied by the host are returned rather than kept. Allow a full hour for the transfer to the station, and keep the drawings and tally sheets in hand luggage; a folder that goes into the hold and does not arrive is a term's work lost.

Cultural Insight — what a short field course leaves behind
Ten days does not make anyone an excavator; a professional field archaeologist will spend years on a single site. What the course can do is make the difference visible between the object in the display case and the chain of decisions and records that put it there, and to leave participants able to read a section drawing, write a context sheet and know why nobody is allowed to pick up a sherd. The test of the course is whether, the next time they walk past a construction site that has been fenced off in a Chinese city, they know what is probably happening behind the fence.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch

Accommodation
Day ends on departure - no hotel night included.