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Settlement and Landscape Archaeology
For contemporary archaeology, settlement and landscape approaches represent an increasingly important
focus that is vital for a core mission of the discipline
to describe, understand, and explain long-term
cultural and behavioral change. Despite this signicance, few syntheses of this topic have been undertaken (cf. Parsons 1972, Ammerman 1981, Fish and
Kowalewski 1990, Billman and Feinman 1999). Yet
settlement and landscape approaches provide the only
large-scale perspective for the majority of premodern
societies. These studies are reliant on archaeological
surface surveys, which discover and record the distribution of material traces of past human presence}
habitation across a landscape (see Surey and
Excaation (Field Methods) in Archaeology). The
examination and analysis of these physical remains
found on the ground surface (e.g., potsherds, stone
artifacts, house foundations, or earthworks) provide
the empirical foundation for the interpretation of
ancient settlement patterns and landscapes.
1.
Historical Background
Although the roots of settlement pattern and landscape approaches extend back to the end of the
nineteenth century, archaeological survey has only
come into its own in the post World War II era.
Spurred by the analytical emphases of Steward (1938),
Willeys 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. Nevertheless, contemporary archaeological studies indicate a high degree of intellectual
cross-fertilization between these dierent surface approaches.
1.2
Enironmental Constraints
2.4
Population Estimation
2.5
G. M. Feinman
Bibliography
Adams R M 1965 Land Behind Baghdad: A History of Settlement
on the Diyala Plains. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Adams R M 1981 Heartland of Cities: Sureys of Ancient
Settlement and Land Use on the Central Floodplain of the
Euphrates. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Ammerman A J 1981 Surveys and archaeological research.
Annual Reiew of Anthropology 10: 6388
Billman B R, Feinman G M (eds.) 1999 Settlement Pattern
Studies in the Americas: Fifty Years Since ViruU . Smithsonian
Institution Press, Washington, DC
ISBN: 0-08-043076-7