International Encyclopedia of the Social

and Behavioral Sciences

edited by Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes
2001
Elsevier, Amsterdam

Set
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.

1.1 Early Foundations for Archaeological Surey in

the Americas and England
The American settlement pattern tradition stems back
to scholars, such as Morgan (1881), who queried how
the remnants of Native American residential architecture reected the social organization of the native
peoples who occupied them. Yet the questions posed

by Morgan led to relatively few immediate changes in

how archaeology was practiced, and for several
decades few scholars endeavored to address the
specic questions regarding the relationship between
settlement and social behavior that Morgan posed.
When surface reconnaissance was undertaken by
archaeologists, it tended to be a largely unsystematic
exercise carried out to nd sites worthy of excavation.
In the UK, the landscape approach, pioneered by
Fox (1922), was more narrowly focused on the
denition of distributional relationships between different categories of settlements and environmental
features (e.g., soils, vegetation, topography). Often
these early studies relied on and summarized surveys
and excavations that were carried out by numerous
investigators using a variety of eld procedures rather
than more uniform or systematic coverage implemented by a single research team. At the same time,
the European landscape tradition generally has had a
closer link to romantic thought as opposed to the more
positivistic roots of the North American settlement
pattern tradition (e.g., Sherratt 1996).

1.2

The Deelopment of Settlement Archaeology

By the 1930s and 1940s, US archaeologists working in

several global regions recognized that changing patterns of social organization could not be reconstructed
and interpreted through empirical records that relied
exclusively on the excavation of a single site or
community within a specic region. For example, in
the lower Mississippi Valley, Phillips et al. (1951)
located and mapped archaeological sites across a large
area to analyze shifting patterns of ceramic styles and
settlements over broad spatial domains and temporal
contexts.
Yet the most inuential and problem-focused investigation of that era was that of Willey in the Viru!
Valley. Willeys project was the rst to formally
elucidate the scope and potential analytical utility of
settlement patterns for understanding long-term
change in human economic and social relationships.
His vision moved beyond the basic correlation of
environmental features and settlements as well as
beyond the mere denition of archtypical settlement
types for a given region. In addition to its theoretical
contributions, the Viru! program also was innovative
methodologically, employing (for the rst time in the
Western Hemisphere) vertical air photographs in the
location and mapping of ancient settlements. Al13937

Settlement and Landscape Archaeology

though Willey did not carry out his survey entirely on
foot, he did achieve reasonably systematic areal
coverage for a dened geographic domain for which
he could examine changes in the frequency of site
types, as well as diachronic shifts in settlement
patterns.
Conceptually and methodologically, these early
settlement pattern projects of the 1930s and 1940s
established the intellectual underpinnings for a number of multigenerational regional archaeological survey programs that were initiated in at least four global
regions during the 1950s and 1960s. In many ways,
these later survey programs were integral to the
theoretical and methodological re-evaluations that
occurred in archaeological thought and practice under
the guise of the New Archaeology or processualism.
The latter theoretical framework stemmed in part
from an expressed emphasis on understanding longterm processes of behavioral change and cultural
transition at the population (and so regional) scale.
This perspective, which replaced a more normative
emphasis on archtypical sites or cultural patterns, was
made possible to a signicant degree by the novel
diachronic and broad scalar vantages pieced together
for specic areas through systematic regional settlement pattern eldwork and analysis.
1.3

Large-scale Regional Surey Programs

During the 1950s through the 1970s, major regional

settlement pattern programs were initiated in the
heartlands of three areas where early civilizations
emerged (Greater Mesopotamia, highland Mexico,
and the Aegean), as well as in one area known for its
rich and diverse archaeological heritage (the Southwest USA). The achievements of the Viru! project also
stimulated continued Andean settlement pattern surveys, although a concerted push for regional research
did not take root there until somewhat later (e.g.,
Parsons et al. 1997, Billman and Feinman 1999).
Beginning in 1957, Robert M. Adams (e.g., 1965,
1981) and his associates methodically traversed the
deserts and plains of the Near East by jeep, mapping
earthen tells and other visible sites. Based on the
coverage of hundreds of square kilometers, these
pioneering studies of regional settlement history
served to unravel some of the processes associated
with the early emergence of social, political, and
economic complexity in Greater Mesopotamia.
Shortly thereafter, in highland Mexico, large-scale,
systematic surveys were initiated in the areas two
largest mountain valleys (the Basin of Mexico and the
Valley of Oaxaca). These two projects implemented
eld-by-eld, pedestrian coverage of some of the
largest contiguous survey regions in the world, elucidating the diachronic settlement patterns for regions
in which some of the earliest and most extensive cities
in the ancient Americas were situated (e.g., Sanders et
al. 1979, Blanton et al. 1993). After decades, about
13938

half of the Basin of Mexico and almost the entire

Valley of Oaxaca were traversed by foot.
In the Aegean, regional surveys (McDonald and
Rapp 1972, Renfrew 1972) were designed to place
important sites with long excavation histories in
broader spatial contexts. Once again, these investigations brought new regional vantages to areas that
already had witnessed decades of excavation and
textual analyses. Over the same period, settlement
pattern studies were carried out in diverse ecological
settings across the US Southwest, primarily to examine
the dierential distributions of archaeological sites in
relation to their natural environments, and to determine changes in the numbers and sizes of settlements across the landscape over time. In each of the
areas investigated, the wider the study domain
covered, the more diverse and complex were the
patterns found. Growth in one part of a larger study
area was often timed with the decrease in the size and
number of sites in another. And settlement trends for
given regions generally were reected in episodes of
both growth and decline.
Each of these major survey regions (including much
of the Andes) is an arid to semiarid environment.
Without question, broad-scale surface surveys have
been most eectively implemented in regions that lack
dense ground cover, and therefore the resultant eld
ndings have been most robust. In turn, these ndings
have fomented long research traditions carried out by
trained crews, thereby contributing to the intellectual
rewards of these eorts. As Ammerman (1981, p. 74)
has recognized, major factors in the success of the
projects would appear to be the sheer volume of work
done and the experience that workers have gradually
built up over the years.

1.4 Settlement Pattern Research at Smaller Scales

of Analysis
Although settlement pattern approaches were most
broadly applied at the regional scale, other studies
followed similar conceptual principles in the examination of occupational surfaces, structures, and
communities. At the scale of individual living surfaces
or house oors, such distributional analyses have
provided key indications as to which activities (such as
cooking, food preparation, and toolmaking) were
undertaken in dierent sectors (activity areas) of
specic structures (e.g., Flannery and Winter 1976) or
surfaces (e.g., Flannery 1986, pp. 321423). In many
respects, the current emphasis on household archaeology (e.g., Wilk and Rathje 1982) is an extension
of settlement pattern studies (see Household Archaeology). Both household and settlement pattern approaches have fostered a growing interest in the nonelite sector of complex societies, and so have spurred
the eort to understand societies as more than just
undierentiated, normative wholes.

Settlement and Landscape Archaeology

At the intermediate scale of single sites or communities, settlement pattern approaches have compared the distribution of architectural and artifactual
evidence across individual sites. Such investigations
have clearly demonstrated signicant intrasettlement
variation in the functional use of space (e.g., Hill
1970), as well as distinctions in socioeconomic status
and occupational history (e.g., Blanton 1978). From a
comparative perspective, detailed settlement pattern
maps and plans of specic sites have provided key
insights into the similarities and dierences between
contemporaneous cities and communities in specic
regions, as well as the elucidation of important
patterns of cross-cultural diversity.

the areas that they endeavor to examine to the nature

of the terrain and the density of artifactual debris
(generally nonperishable ancient refuse) associated
with the sites in the specied region. For example,
sedentary pottery-using peoples generally created
more garbage than did mobile foragers; the latter
usually employed more perishable containers (e.g.,
baskets, cloth bags). Consequently, other things being
equal, the sites of foragers are generally less accessible
through settlement and landscape approaches than
are the ancient settlements that were inhabited for
longer durations (especially when ceramics were used).
2.2

2. Contemporary Research Strategies and

Ongoing Debates
The expansion of settlement pattern and landscape
approaches over the last decades has promoted the
increasing acceptance of less normative perspectives
on cultural change and diversity across the discipline
of archaeology. In many global domains, archaeological surveys have provided a new regional-scale
(and in a few cases, macroregional-scale) vantage on
past social systems. Settlement pattern studies also
have yielded a preliminary means for estimating the
parameters of diachronic demographic change and
distribution at the scale of populations, something
almost impossible to obtain from excavations alone.
Nevertheless, important discussions continue over the
environmental constraints on implementation, the
relative strengths and weaknesses of dierent survey
methodologies, issues of chronological control, procedures for population estimation, and the appropriate means for the interpretation of settlement
pattern data.
2.1

Enironmental Constraints

Although systematic settlement pattern and landscape

studies have been undertaken in diverse environmental
settings including heavily vegetated locales such as the
Guatemalan Pete! n, the eastern woodlands of North
America, and temperate Europe, the most sustained
and broadly implemented regional survey programs to
date have been enacted in arid environments. In large
part, this preference pertains to the relative ease of
nding the artifactual and architectural residues of
ancient sites on the surface of landscapes that lack
thick vegetal covers. Nevertheless, archaeologists have
devised a variety of means, such as the interpolation of
satellite images, the detailed analysis of aerial photographs, and subsurface testing programs, that can be
employed to locate and map past settlements in locales
where they are difficult to nd through pedestrian
coverage alone. In each study area, regional surveys
also have to modify their specic eld methodologies
(the intensity of the planned coverage) and the sizes of

Surey Methodologies and Sampling

Practically since the inception of settlement pattern

research, archaeologists have employed a range of
dierent eld survey methods. A critical distinction
has been drawn between full-coverage and sample
surveys. The former approaches rely on the complete
and systematic coverage of the study region by
members of a survey team. In order to ensure the full
coverage of large survey blocks, team members often
space themselves 2550 m apart, depending on the
specic ground cover, the terrain, and the density of
archaeological materials. As a consequence, isolated
artifact nds can occasionally be missed. But the
researchers generally can discern a reasonably complete picture of settlement pattern change across a
given region. Alternatively, sample surveys by denition are restricted to the investigation of only a part of
(a sample of ) the study region. Frequently such studies
(because they only cover sections of larger regions)
allow for the closer spacing of crew members.
Archaeologists have employed a range of dierent
sampling designs. Samples chosen for investigation
may be selected randomly or stratied by a range of
diverse factors, including environmental variables.
Nevertheless, regardless of the specic sampling designs employed, such sample surveys face the problem
of extrapolating the results from their surveyed
samples to larger target domains that are the ultimate
focus of study. Ultimately, such sample surveys have
been shown to be more successful at estimating the
total number of sites in a given study region than at
dening the spacing between sites or at discovering
rare types of settlement. The appropriateness of
sample design can only be decided by the kinds of
information that the investigator aims to recover.
There is no single correct way to conduct archaeological survey, but certain methodological procedures
have proven more productive in specic contexts and
given particular research aims.
2.3

Chronological Constraints and Considerations

One of the principal strengths of settlement pattern

research is that it provides a broad-scale perspective
13939

Settlement and Landscape Archaeology

on the changing distribution of human occupation
across landscapes. Yet the precision of such temporal
sequences depends on the quality of chronological
control (see Chronology, Stratigraphy, and Dating
Methods in Archaeology). The dating of sites during
surveys must depend on the recovery and temporal
placement of chronologically diagnostic artifacts from
the surface of such occupations. Artifacts found on the
surface usually are already removed from their depositional contexts. Finer chronometric dating methods generally are of little direct utility for settlement
pattern research, since such methods are premised on
the recovery of materials in their depositional contexts.
Of course, chronometric techniques can be used in
more indirect fashion to rene the relative chronological sequences that are derived from the temporal
ordering of diagnostic artifacts (typically pottery).
In many regions, the chronological sequences can
only be rened to periods of several hundred years in
length. As a result, sites of shorter occupational
durations that may be judged to be contemporaneous
in fact could have been inhabited sequentially. In the
same vein, the size of certain occupations may be
overestimated as episodes of habitation are conated.
Although every eort should be made to minimize
such analytical errors, these problems in themselves do
not negate the general importance of the long-term
regional perspective on occupational histories that in
many areas of the world can be derived from archaeological survey alone. Although the broad-brush perspective from surveys may never provide the precision
or detailed views that are possible from excavation,
they yield an encompassing representation at the
population scale that excavations cannot achieve.
Adequate holistic perspectives on past societies rely on
the multiscalar vantages that are provided through the
integration of wide-ranging archaeological surveys
with targeted excavations.

2.4

Population Estimation

One of the key changes in archaeological thought and

conceptualization over the past half-century has been
the shift from essentialist}normative thinking about
ancient societies to a more populational perspective.
But the issue of how to dene past populations, their
constituent parts, and the changing modes of interaction between those parts remains challenging at
best. Clearly, multiscalar perspectives on past social
systems are necessary to collect the basic data required
to estimate areal shifts in population size and distribution. Yet considerable debate has been engendered over the means employed by archaeologists to
extrapolate from the density and dispersal of surface
artifacts pertaining to a specic phase to the estimated
sizes of past communities or populations.
Generally, archaeologists have relied on some combination of the empirically derived size of a past
13940

settlement, along with a comparative determination of

surface artifact densities at that settlement, to generate
demographic estimates for a given community. When
the estimates are completed for each settlement across
an entire survey region, extrapolations become possible for larger study domains. By necessity, the specic
equations to estimate past populations vary from one
region to another because community densities are far
from uniform over time or space. Yet due to chronological limitations, as well as the processes of deposition, disturbance, and destruction, our techniques
for measuring ancient populations remain coarsegrained. Although much renement is still needed to
translate survey data into quantitative estimates of
population with a degree of precision and accuracy,
systematic regional surveys still can provide the basic
patterns of long-term demographic change over time
and space that cannot be ascertained in any other
way.

2.5

The Interpretation of Regional Data

Beyond the broad-brush assessment of demographic

trends and site distribution in relation to environmental considerations, archaeologists have interpreted
and analyzed regional sets of data in a variety of ways.
Landscape approaches, which began with a focused
perspective on humans and their surrounding environment, have continued in that vein, often at
smaller scales. Such studies often examine in detail the
placement of sites in a specic setting with an eye
toward landscape conservation and the meanings
behind site placement (Sherratt 1996). At the same
time, some landscape studies have emphasized the
identication of ancient agrarian features and their
construction and use.
In contrast, the dierent settlement pattern investigations have employed a range of analytical and
interpretive strategies. In general, these have applied
more quantitative procedures and asked more comparatively informed questions. Over the last 40 years
(e.g., Johnson 1977), a suite of locational models
derived from outside the discipline has served as guides
against which dierent sets of archaeological data
could be measured and compared. Yet debates have
arisen over the underlying assumptions of such models
and whether they are appropriate for understanding
the preindustrial past. For that reason, even when
comparatively close ts were achieved between heuristically derived expectations and empirical ndings,
questions regarding equinality (similar outcomes due
to dierent processes) emerged. More recently, theorybuilding eorts have endeavored to rework and
expand these locational models to specically archaeological contexts with a modicum of success. Continued
work in this vein, along with the integration of some of
the conceptual strengths from both landscape and
settlement pattern approaches are requisite to under-

Sex Differences in Pay

standing the complex web of relations that govern
human-to-human and human-to-environment interactions across diverse regions over long expanses of
time.

3. Looking Forward: The Critical Role of

Settlement Studies
The key feature and attribute of archaeology is its long
temporal panorama on human social formations.
Understanding these formations and how they
changed, diversied, and varied requires a regional}
populational perspective (as well as other vantages at
other scales). Over the last century, the methodological
and interpretive toolkits necessary to obtain this
broad-scale view have emerged, diverged, and thrived.
The emergence of archaeological survey (and settlement pattern and landscape approaches) has been
central to the disciplinary growth of archaeology and
its increasing ability to address and to contribute to
questions of long-term societal change. At the same
time, the advent of settlement pattern studies has had
a critical role in moving the discipline as a whole from
normative to populational frameworks.
Yet settlement pattern work has only recently
entered the popular notion of this discipline, long
wrongly equated with and dened by excavation
alone. Likewise, many archaeologists nd it difficult to
come to grips with a regional perspective that has its
strength in (broad) representation at the expense of
specic reconstructed detail. Finally, the potential for
theoretical contributions and insights from settlement
pattern and landscape approaches (and the wealth of
data collected by such studies) has only scratched the
surface. In many respects, the growth of regional
survey and analysis represents one of the most important conceptual developments of twentieth-century
archaeology. Yet at the same time, there are still so
many mountains (literally and guratively) to climb.
See also: Chronology, Stratigraphy, and Dating
Methods in Archaeology; Household Archaeology;
Survey and Excavation (Field Methods) in Archaeology

Blanton R E 1978 Monte AlbaU n: Settlement Patterns at the

Ancient Zapotec Capital. Academic Press, New York
Blanton R E, Kowalewski S A, Feinman G M, Finsten L M
1993 Ancient Mesoamerica: A Comparison of Change in Three
Regions, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
UK
Fish S K, Kowalewski S A (eds.) 1990 The Archaeology of
Regions: A Case for Full-coerage Surey. Smithsonian
Institution Press, Washington, DC
Flannery K V (ed.) 1986 GuilaU Naquitz: Archaic Foraging and
Early Agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico. Academic Press,
Orlando, FL
Flannery K V, Winter M C 1976 Analyzing household activities.
In: Flannery K V (ed.) The Early Mesoamerican Village.
Academic Press, New York, pp. 3447
Fox C 1923 The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
Hill J N 1970 Broken K Pueblo: Prehistoric Social Organization
in the American Southwest. University of Arizona Press,
Tucson, AZ
Johnson G A 1977 Aspects of regional analysis in archaeology.
Annual Reiew of Anthropology 6: 479508
McDonald W A, Rapp G R Jr (eds.) 1972 The Minnesota
Messenia Expedition. Reconstructing a Bronze Age Enironment. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN
Morgan L H 1881 Houses and House Life of the American
Aborigines. US Department of Interior, Washington, DC
Parsons J R 1972 Archaeological settlement patterns. Annual
Reiew of Anthropology 1: 12750
Parsons J R, Hastings C M, Matos R 1997 Rebuilding the state
in highland Peru: Herder-cultivator interaction during the
Late Intermediate period in Tarama-Chinchaycocha region.
Latin American Antiquity 8: 31741
Phillips P, Ford J A, Griffin J B 1951 Archaeological Surey in
the Lower Mississippi Alluial Valley, 194147. Peabody
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge, MA
Renfrew C 1972 The Emergence of Ciilisation. The Cyclades and
the Aegean in the Third Millennium BC. Methuen, London
Sanders W T, Parsons J R, Santley R S 1979 The Basin of
Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Eolution of a Ciilization.
Academic Press, New York
Sherratt A 1996 Settlement patterns or landscape studies?
Reconciling reason and romance. Archaeological Dialogues 3:
14059
Steward J H 1938 Basin Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical
Groups. Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, DC
Wilk R R, Rathje W L (eds). 1982 Archaeology of the Household:
Building a Prehistory of Domestic Life. American Behaioral
Scientist 25(6)
Willey G R 1953 Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the ViruU
Valley, Peru. Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington,
DC

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

Sex Differences in Pay

Dierences in pay between men and women remain
pervasive in late twentieth-century labor markets, with
womens average earnings consistently below mens
13941

Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences

ISBN: 0-08-043076-7