Settlement Patterns: the distribution of sites across the landscape within a given region; a spatially ordered system of land use.

Settlement Archaeology and Spatial Analysis

"Of recent years there has been a growing awareness of, and interest in, the problems presented by distances between places on the surface of the earth" (Chisholm 1979:11).

Over twenty years later, this statement still rings true for archaeologists, who are concerned with site distributions, correlations between distributions of cultural and natural resources, regional systems, world systems, and especially with maps depicting such phenomena. Settlement archaeology is the outcome of that concern with spatial relationships. Although it remained undefined and unsophisticated prior to the publication of Gordon Willey's (1953) groundbreaking settlement pattern study of Viru Valley, Peru, concepts of settlement archaeology were already present in the writings of many late 19th and early 20th century archaeologists. Willey, however, treated quite differently from his intellectual predecessors. To Willey, settlement patterns did not provide direct and unequivocal examples of human adaptation to ecological factors, but, rather, insights into a wide spectrum of human behaviors that influenced, and were influenced by both cultural and ecological environmental factors.

Willey's careful work and holistic ideas made settlement archaeology attractive and readily applicable to subsequent archaeologists, who continue to incorporate spatial analyses in their attempts to explain prehistoric human behavior. Today, however, archaeologists interested in settlement patterns have a relatively new and powerful type of tool-a tool of which Willey could have only dreamed in the 1950s--computerized geographic information systems.

Geographic Information Systems as Analytical Tools for Archaeological Research

GIS stands for geographic information systems. GIS are used to manipulate digital geographic data with the aid of computers. As you will see, GIS-aided analysis has tremendous potential to aid archaeologists in their continued quest to understand how humans influence, and are influenced by, their cultural and ecological environments. GIS allow a researcher to display, quantify, and query limitless permutations of geographic/spatial data within a single site (intrasite) or between many sites (intersite). With the touch of a few computer keys, GIS allow archaeologists to evaluate alternative ideas addressing how people settled and utilized past landscapes, based on the spatial patterning of the remains. This formidable analytical power and ever-improving accessibility should promote the use of GIS in archaeological research so that they may become as common tools as compasses, shovels, and trowels within the next decade.

So, what are GIS, exactly? Bryant and Zobrist (1977:120) said of GIS technology in its earliest manifestations, "GIS seek to capitalize on the synergism inherent in being able to automatically compare a variety of socioeconomic, environmental, and land use data sets for the same point on the ground." Thus, as extremely powerful and fully automated analytical tools, GIS provide a methodology for spatial analysis, regional model building, and simulation with geographically tethered archaeological data. According to Kvamme (1989:139), "GIS can be viewed as data management systems with a spatial component…designed for the manipulation, analysis, storage, capture, retrieval, and display of data that can be referenced to geographic locations." GIS readily accommodate archaeological data in the forms of isolated artifacts, artifact scatters, villages, traditional cultural places, trails, etc.

GIS are composed of: 1) computer hardware components designed to aid data input, storage, display, and output, 2) sophisticated software applications, such as and , that are designed to manipulate geographic data, and 3) knowledgeable human operators. Kvamme's (1989) chapter in Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 1 (referenced in attached bibliography) is a superb introduction and comprehensive overview of what geographic information systems are composed and their applications to archaeological research. Click here to read an excerpt from the chapter that clearly explains the basics of GIS in more detail. Links to additional online GIS resources are provided near the end of the module.