Spurred by the analytical emphases of Steward (1938), Willey’s Viru Valley archaeological survey (1953) provided a key impetus for settlement pattern research in the Americas. In contrast, the landscape approach, which has a more focal emphasis on the relationship between sites and their physical environments, has its roots in the UK.
Full Answer
What is the difference between landscape and settlement archaeology?
While similar to settlement archaeology and ecological archaeology, landscape approaches model places and spaces as dynamic participants in past behavior, not merely setting (affecting human action), or artifact (affected by human action)".
What is settlement pattern in archaeology?
Updated March 08, 2017. In the scientific field of archaeology, the term "settlement pattern" refers to the evidence within a given region of the physical remnants of communities and networks. That evidence is used to interpret the way interdependent local groups of people interacted in the past.
When did settlement archaeology take off?
This aspect of settlement archaeology really took off in the first half of the twentieth century in Europe, as in many other regions of the world, and for interesting reasons is still relevant today.
What is another name for landscape archaeology?
It is also known as archaeogeography (from the Greek ἀρχαίος "ancient", and γεωγραφία "earth study"). Landscape archaeology is inherently multidisciplinary in its approach to the study of culture, and is used by pre-historical, classic, and historic archaeologists.
What do settlement patterns tell archaeologists?
The study of settlement patterns in archaeology involves a set of techniques and analytical methods to examine the cultural past of a region. The method allows examination of sites in their contexts, as well as interconnectedness and change across time.
What geographic factors influence patterns of human settlement?
Some of the factors that have positive influence on developing a human settlement are water supply, flat and arable land, protection, shelter from weather, bridging point, crossroad – intersection of roads, while land that floods, marshy or steep land, no protection, no building or water supply, may be considered to be ...
Why is settlement Archaeology critical to our understanding of the past?
Why is settlement archaeology critical to our understanding of the past? Archaeologists study households by seeing how household members interact with other individuals in other households as well as how entire households interact with other households.
What does settlement pattern mean?
settlement patterns. Definition English: A settlement pattern refers to the way that buildings and houses are distributed in a rural settlement. Settlement patterns are of interest to geographers, historians, and anthropologists for the insight they offer in how a community has developed over time.
Who was the founder of settlement geography?
Who is known as father of Settlement geography? Eratosthenes is known as the Father of settlement ģeography.
What was the greatest determining factor of human settlement?
Answer: water was the greatest determining factor of human settlement.
Who was the first and most influential archaeologist to employ settlement pattern analysis?
WilleyBy Jorge Sifuentes and Eric White Willey pioneered settlement pattern studies based on fieldwork in Peru's Viru Valley during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Before that he worked in the American southeast, applying innovative methods for the analysis of pottery and the reconstruction of ancient cultural history.
What can the archaeological record tell us about human prehistory?
The archaeological record provides a unique, long-term view of the evolution of human behavior. The study of human evolution includes an examination of the physical, genetic, and behavioral variation of the hominin lineage since we diverged from other apes some seven million years ago or more.
What can archaeology tell us about the past?
Archaeologists are interested in how people of the past lived, worked, traded with others, moved across the landscape, and what they believed. Understanding the past may help us better understand our own society and that of other cultures.
What are the 3 settlement patterns?
Population settlement patterns can be separated into to three distinct patterns: Linear. Clustered (or nucleated) Scattered.
What are the 4 settlement patterns?
Rural settlement patterns refer to the shape of the settlement boundaries, which often involve an interaction with the surrounding landscape features. The most common patterns are linear, rectangular, circular or semi-circular, and triangular.
Why is geography important to the patterns of settlement?
Geography is often a major factor in deciding where a group of people settle. People need access to natural resources to build their homes and other infrastructure, to land that can provide food and water, and to places that are easily accessible to those who live in them.
What are factors that influence settlement?
In order to better categorize which factors ultimately affect settlement, geographers have generally accepted four umbrella terms to describe these elements: climatic, economic, physical, and traditional.
What are the factors influencing the location of settlement?
Studies show that there are three sets of factors that affect the sites and location of rural settlements. They are-physical factors, socio-cultural factors and economic factors. In this article, these factors are discussed with case study references which is a vital part of settlement studies.
What are 3 factors that affect rural settlement patterns?
There are several factors influencing rural settlement types and patterns. The factors are: cultural, physical, economic, historical, and demographic. Physical factors influencing settlement types and patterns include soil fertility, terrain, rainfall, etc.
How does the environment affect settlement patterns?
Natural factors such as terrain, rivers and sunlight influence the construction of settlements at both regional and local levels. This gives settlements certain characteristics of distribution, scale, hierarchy and morphology.
What is the study of settlement patterns in archaeology?
The study of settlement patterns in archaeology involves a set of techniques and analytical methods to examine the cultural past of a region.
When was the settlement pattern developed?
Settlement pattern as a concept was developed by social geographers in the late 19th century. The term referred then to how people live across a given landscape, in particular, what resources (water, arable land, transportation networks) they chose to live by and how they connected with one another: and the term is still a current study in geography of all flavors.
What is a laser in archaeology?
LiDAR (light detection and ranging), a technology used in archaeology since the turn of the 21st century, is a remote sensing technique that is conducted with lasers connected to a helicopter or drone. The lasers visually pierce the vegetative cover, mapping huge settlements and revealing previously unknown details that can be ground-truthed. Successful use of LiDAR technology has included mapping the landscapes of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Stonehenge world heritage site in England, and previously unknown Maya sites in Mesoamerica, all providing insight for regional studies of settlement patterns.
What is the difference between a settlement pattern and a settlement system?
If there is a difference, and you could argue about that, it might be that pattern studies look at the observable distribution of sites, while system studies look at how the people living at those sites interacted: modern archaeology can't really do one with the other.
How was settlement pattern study conducted?
Settlement pattern studies were first conducted using regional survey, in which archaeologists systematically walked over hectares and hectares of land, typically within a given river valley. But the analysis only truly became feasible after remote sensing was developed, beginning with photographic methods such as those used by Pierre Paris at Oc Eo but now, of course, using satellite imagery and drones.
What is settlement pattern?
In the scientific field of archaeology, the term "settlement pattern" refers to the evidence within a given region of the physical remnants of communities and networks. That evidence is used to interpret the way interdependent local groups of people interacted in the past. People have lived and interacted together ...
Who was the first person to study Pueblo settlement?
According to American archaeologist Jeffrey Parsons, settlement patterns in anthropology began with the late 19th-century work of anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan who was interested in how modern Pueblo societies were organized.
How long ago did we change the landscape?
At least they can now prove that we did so, almost 100,000 years ago. "This is essentially what we call the earliest anthropogenic landscape on Earth," says David Wright, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oslo.
Who discovered that early humans altered the landscape and ecology in Northern Malawi using fire?
Professor David Wright has discovered that early humans altered the landscape and ecology in Northern Malawi using fire. Credit: D. Wright. "The Rift Valley along Lake Malawi is bordered by really steep mountains, and so you get big alluvial fans, essentially big sediment packages.
How long ago did the Palaeolithic age last?
As for Sub-Saharan Africa, it is common to divide the Palaeolithic into: Early Stone Age (2,6 million – 230 000 years ago) Hominins including Homo habilis and Homo erectus, the predecessors to Homo sapiens, developed and used simple tools to open nuts and process starchy tubers.
Why did the Karonga people burn down the forest?
Archaeologists believe the humans who arrived in the Karonga district started burning down the forest to open the landscape for hunting. Credit: Og Mpango/Unsplash.
What was the first step toward inhabiting the rest of the world?
A first step toward inhabiting the rest of the world was learning how to modify the landscapes in Malawi to our benefit.
What was the other important discovery in Malawi?
The other important discovery was that human activity changed the overall ecology in northern Malawi.
What did the Stone Age people trade with each other?
They traded ostrich egg shell beads and other items over hundreds of kilometres with each other. Late Stone Age (50 000 – 2000 years ago) Tools are made of small rocks (microliths), trade networks are vast and people left Africa to explore new continents.
Who started the spatial archaeology trend?
The spatial archaeology trend was launched by Ian Hodder in 1976. It is an archaeological trend, such as ethnoarchaeology, cognitive archaeology and other archaeological approaches. Spatial archaeology was defined by David L. Clarke in 1977.
What distinguishes landscape archaeology from other archaeological approaches to sites?
The key feature that distinguishes landscape archaeology from other archaeological approaches to sites is that there is an explicit emphasis on the sites' relationships between material culture, human alteration of land/cultural modifications to landscape, and the natural environment.
What is landscape archaeology?
Landscape archaeology, a sub-discipline of archaeology and archaeological theory, is the study of the ways in which people in the past constructed and used the environment around them. It is also known as archaeogeography (from the Greek ἀρχαίος "ancient", and γεωγραφία "earth study").
Why is landscape archaeology important?
Landscape Archaeology has been useful in the analysis of cultural identities that developed among social and racial groups. It has been argued that the existence and continued use of yard spaces among Black Americans (along with other African-derived practices observed in the Americas) is proof of a distinct, new world, cultural identity . One feature that appears to be widespread throughout the African diaspora is the significant importance of yard spaces in the everyday lives of African-Americans. Sidney W. Mintz, in describing the “house-and-yard pattern” among African-American peasants residing in the Caribbean, explains “…the house, particularly among poorer peasants, is not important in itself as a material representation (i.e. material culture/artifacts) of the domestic group or family”. Mintz further states that while the house “…is usually used mainly for sleeping and for storing clothing and other articles of personal value” the yard is where “…children play, the washing is done, the family relaxes, and friends are entertained”.
How does human geography use location analysis?
Human geography uses location analysis to define models for the understanding of the territorial organisation. The archaeologists Higgs and Vita-Finzi began to apply Site Catchment Analysis (SCA) in 1970s. They proposed a new approach to know how people settled in prehistoric societies. They analysed economic resources with tools taken from Human Geography, these resources were 5-10km from the archaeological sites. Some years later, in the 1970s, spatial archaeology was created, based on the use of several tools taken from 1960s English Human Geography that was focus on the study of location interdependence. Some archaeologists use these geographical techniques (Hodder y Orton 1976; Hodder 1977, 1978; Clarke 1977 ). But these techniques were only used in isolated contexts. They did not fully constitute an archaeological method and lacked a theoretical basis.
What is landscape approach?
While similar to settlement archaeology and ecological archaeology, landscape approaches model places and spaces as dynamic participants in past behavior, not merely setting (affecting human action), or artifact (affected by human action)". The term space has commonly been used in place of cultural landscape to describe landscapes ...
Why did archaeologists criticize the classical view of site catchment analysis?
The reason was related to the lack of a general method to study archaeological territory. In 1989, Javier de Carlos said that archaeology was only able to apply geographical techniques without being able to use a procedure integrated in a method.
Extract
In considering the history of regional archaeological projects, I propose to use a long-term perspective.
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Why is archaeology important?
The broad scope of archaeology makes it ideally suited to providing important insights into the way that human populations were adapted to particular environments and ecological niches, and the success or failure of those adaptations.
Is archaeology a collaborative discipline?
Humans have been very successful at adapting their behaviour to a diverse range of environments across the planet, and climate, climate change, and human/environment relationships are of critical importance in the present. Archaeology is inherently a collaborative and comparative discipline ...
What is the model of settlement?
The first model presumes the existence of a dense and evenly dispersed distribution of farms in landscapes that were settled by Roman colonists. The second, in contrast, proposes a nucleated settlement model, hypothesizing that villages, rather than dispersed farms, dominated in early colonial landscapes.
Why are legacy surveys important?
This is because unregulated recent transformations related to intensive agriculture, erosion, construction work, and urbanization are currently incisively changing the soil and destroying the archaeological sites on and under its surface. Legacy survey data about these sites, collected in the field before recent massive destructions, form an extremely important record for studying the past.
What is the purpose of the proposed GIS procedure?
The aim was to establish which one is more probable based on survey data . The first model presumes the existence of a dense and evenly dispersed distribution of farms in landscapes that were settled by Roman colonists. The second, in contrast, proposes a nucleated settlement model, hypothesizing that villages, rather than dispersed farms, dominated in early colonial landscapes.
Why are methodological procedures necessary?
Methodological procedures are necessary to cope with the limits of these data, and more importantly with the distortions on data patterns caused by biasing factors. This research project develops and applies a GIS procedure to use legacy survey data in settlement pattern analysis. The GIS procedure unfolds in two parts.
Intrasettlement Archaeology
- Analysis of past settlement sites generally relies on combining various methodologies. Very rarely are such sites totally excavated, especially if they are larger than single farmsteads. Thus, inferences are made by linking windows of detailed information from dug sectors (if available) …
Intersettlement Archaeology
- We can make a useful distinction in most cases between the relationship of a settlement to its immediate landscape and its relationships with neighboring and more distant settlements. By the 1930s, and increasingly in later decades, archaeologists and geographers investigated the location of domestic and other sites with respect to the qualities of their surrounding physical la…
Total Landscape History
- So far we have examined the internal plans of settlements, the way their occupants moved out to exploit a site's environment, and the dependency relationships between central places and the lesser rural communities they serviced. But also, how does one find, map, date, and interpret the vestiges of past settlements? It might seem relatively simple. Particularly in western Europe, beg…
Bibliography
- Aston, Michael, and Christopher Gerrard. "'Unique, Traditional, and Charming': The Shapwick Project, Somerset." The Antiquaries Journal79 (1999): 1–58. Bintliff, John L. "Going to Market in Antiquity." In ZuWasser und zu Land: Verkehrswege in der antiken Welt.Edited by Eckart Olshausen and Holger Sonnabend, pp. 209–250. Stuttgarter Kolloquium zur historischen Geogra…
Anthropological Underpinnings
Patterns Versus Systems
- Archaeologists refer to both settlement pattern studies and settlement system studies, sometimes interchangeably. If there is a difference, and you could argue about that, it might be that pattern studies look at the observable distribution of sites, while system studies look at how the people living at those sites interacted: modern archaeology can't really do one with the other.
History of Settlement Pattern Studies
- Settlement pattern studies were first conducted using regional survey, in which archaeologists systematically walked over hectares and hectares of land, typically within a given river valley. But the analysis only truly became feasible after remote sensing was developed, beginning with photographic methods such as those used by Pierre Paris at Oc Eobut now, of course, using sat…
New Technologies
- Although systematic settlement patterns and landscape studies are practiced in many diverse environments, before modern imaging systems, archaeologists attempting to study heavily vegetated areas were not as successful as they might have been. A variety of means to penetrate the gloom have been identified, including the use of high definition aerial photography, subsurfa…
Selected Sources
- Curley, Daniel, John Flynn, and Kevin Barton. "Bouncing Beams Reveal Hidden Archaeology." Archaeology Ireland32.2 (2018): 24–29.
- Feinman, Gary M. "Settlement and Landscape Archaeology." International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences(Second Edition). Ed. Wright, James D. Oxford: Elsevier, 2015. 654–58, doi:10....
- Curley, Daniel, John Flynn, and Kevin Barton. "Bouncing Beams Reveal Hidden Archaeology." Archaeology Ireland32.2 (2018): 24–29.
- Feinman, Gary M. "Settlement and Landscape Archaeology." International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences(Second Edition). Ed. Wright, James D. Oxford: Elsevier, 2015. 654–58, doi:10....
- Golden, Charles, et al. "Reanalyzing Environmental Lidar Data for Archaeology: Mesoamerican Applications and Implications." Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports9 (2016): 293–308, doi:10.1016/...
- Grosman, Leore. "Reaching the Point of No Return: The Computational Revolution in Archaeology." Annual Review of Anthropology45.1 (2016): 129–45, doi:10.1146/annurev-anth…
Overview
Landscape archaeology, a sub-discipline of archaeology and archaeological theory, is the study of the ways in which people in the past constructed and used the environment around them. It is also known as archaeogeography (from the Greek ἀρχαίος "ancient", and γεωγραφία "earth study"). Landscape archaeology is inherently multidisciplinary in its approach to the study of culture, and is used by pre-historical, classic, and historic archaeologists. The key feature that di…
Introduction
Landscape generally refers to both natural environments and environments constructed by human beings. Natural landscapes are considered to be environments that have not been altered by humans in any shape or form. Cultural landscapes, on the other hand, are environments that have been altered in some manner by people (including temporary structures and places, such as campsites, that are created by human beings). Among archaeologists, the term landscape can r…
Analysis of landscapes
Many methods used to analyze archaeological sites are relevant to the analysis of landscapes. The archaeology of landscapes incorporates multiple research methods into its analysis in order to ensure that multiple sources of information are gathered; allowing for a sound interpretation of the site in question. These methods include pollen analysis, Geographic Information Systems, soil sampling, faunal analysis, ground penetrating radar, archival data (including maps and census d…
Sociological aspects of landscape archaeology
Within the discipline of historical archaeology, specifically within the United States, landscape archaeology initially gained prominence with efforts to preserve the homes and gardens of prominent North American figures (see George Washington's Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello), the reconstruction of early colonial settlements (see Colonial Williamsburg) and the analysis of gardens (see Annapolis). Archaeologists studying the aforementioned, and o…
History of the field
The spatial archaeology trend was launched by Ian Hodder in 1976. It is an archaeological trend, such as ethnoarchaeology, cognitive archaeology and other archaeological approaches. Spatial archaeology was defined by David L. Clarke in 1977. He pointed out three analysis levels: macro, micro and semi-micro (Clarke 1977: 11-15). This trend analyses the interaction between nature and culture.
Centers of research
Archaeogeography is taught in France and Portugal. A Masters degree in Archaeology and Environment is given by the University of Paris I. Archaeogeography is also included in University of Coimbra´s curricula of Centro de Estudos de Arqueologia, Artes e Ciências do Património.
See also
• Culture-historical archaeology
• Archaeological theory
• Geographic Information Systems
• Landscape
Sources
• Bjørnar, Olsen; Shanks, Michael; Webmoor, Timothy and Witmore,Christopher. Archaeology: the Discipline of Things. London: University of California Press, 2012.
• Chouquer, Gérard (dir.), Les formes du paysage, tomes 1, 2 et 3 - Études sur les parcellaires, Errance, Paris, 1996-1997.
• Chouquer, Gérard L'étude des paysages. Essai sur leurs formes et leur histoire, Errance, Paris, 2000.