Author's personal copy

Settlement and Landscape Archaeology

Gary M Feinman, The Field Museum, Chicago, IL, USA
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract
Settlement pattern archaeology and the investigation of ancient landscapes, especially when systematically implemented,
have been some of the most signicant archaeological innovations of the last half century. These studies have shed new light
on the emergence of hierarchically organized and urban societies in regions around the world, while also providing new
perspectives on the history of humanenvironmental interactions. This article reviews the roots of these regional archaeological approaches, their theoretical underpinnings, and some of the key empirical contributions.

Settlement pattern and landscape approaches are central to the

mission of contemporary archaeology (Kowalewski, 2008;
Renfrew, 2003, p. 313; Sabloff and Ashmore, 2001, p. 14).
Through archaeological surveys, they provide a regional
perspective on behavioral change that has been key to the
transition from normative to relational or populational
perspectives on the past. Although these studies have had
the greatest impact on the understanding of arid and
semiarid areas, they have been employed under a range
of conditions. There is no correct way to survey; however,
methodological procedures and analytical strategies must
be guided by environmental conditions, available resources,
and research goals. The most successful studies to date have
been those in which signicant and sustained time and labor
investments have been made.
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 changes.
Despite this signicance, relatively few syntheses of this topic
have been undertaken (cf Ammerman, 1981; Billman and
Feinman, 1999; Fish and Kowalewski, 2009; Kowalewski,
2008; Parsons, 1972). 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 Survey and Excavation (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.

the landscape approach, which has a more focal emphasis

on the relationship between sites and their physical
environments, has its roots in the United Kingdom.
Nevertheless, contemporary archaeological studies indicate
a high degree of intellectual cross-fertilization between these
different surface approaches.

Early Foundations for Archaeological Survey 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 United Kingdom, the landscape approach, pioneered by Fox (1923), was more narrowly focused on the
denition of distributional relationships between different
categories of settlements and environmental features (e.g.,
soils, vegetation, and 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).

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 Vir Valley
Archaeological Survey (1953) provided a key impetus for
settlement pattern research in the Americas. In contrast,

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The Development 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.

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Settlement and Landscape Archaeology

(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 Vir 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 archetypical settlement types for a given
region. In addition to its theoretical contributions, the Vir
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. Although 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 reevaluations 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 long-term processes of behavioral change and
cultural transition at the population (and so regional) scale.
This perspective, which replaced a more normative emphasis
on archetypical 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.

Large-Scale Regional Survey 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 United States). The achievements of the Vir 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., Billman and Feinman,
1999; Parsons et al., 1997).
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, largescale, systematic surveys were initiated in the areas two largest
mountain valleys (the Basin of Mexico and the Valley

655

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.,
Blanton et al., 1993; Sanders et al., 1979). After decades, about
half of the Basin of Mexico and almost the entire Valley of
Oaxaca were traversed by foot (Balkansky, 2006).
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 (Galaty, 2005). Over the same period, settlement
pattern studies were carried out in diverse ecological settings
across the US Southwest, primarily to examine the differential
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. More
recently, new projects have introduced systematic, broadcoverage, archaeology settlement pattern studies to other
regions, including parts of northern China (e.g., Feinman
et al., 2010; Peterson et al., 2010; Underhill et al., 2008) and
Madagascar (Wright, 2007). In each of the global 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,
broadscale surface surveys have been most effectively 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 efforts. 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.

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 different
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., Santley and Hirth, 1993; Wilk and Rathje,
1982) is an extension of settlement pattern studies. Both
household and settlement pattern approaches have fostered
a growing interest in the nonelite sector of complex societies,
and so have spurred the effort to understand societies as more
than just undifferentiated, normative wholes.

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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 differences between contemporaneous cities and
communities in specic regions, as well as the elucidation of
important patterns of cross-cultural diversity (e.g., Arnauld
et al., 2012).

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
different survey methodologies, issues of chronological
control, procedures for population estimation, and the
appropriate means for the interpretation of settlement
pattern data.

Environmental Constraints
Although systematic settlement pattern and landscape studies
have been undertaken in diverse environmental settings
including heavily vegetated locales such as the Guatemalan
Petn, 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 difcult to nd through
pedestrian coverage alone (e.g., Chase et al., 2012). In each
study area, regional surveys also have to modify their specic
eld methodologies (the intensity of the planned coverage)
and the sizes of 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 and 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).

Survey Methodologies and Sampling

Practically since the inception of settlement pattern research,
archaeologists have employed a range of different eld survey
methods. A critical distinction has been drawn between fullcoverage and sample surveys. The former approaches rely on
the complete and systematic coverage of the study region by
members of a survey team. 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 different 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 be decided only 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 proved more productive in specic
contexts and given particular research aims.

Chronological Constraints and Considerations

One of the principal strengths of settlement pattern research is
that it provides a broadscale perspective 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

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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 be
rened only 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 effort 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 wideranging archaeological surveys with targeted excavations.

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 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 (e.g., Fang et al., 2004). Yet due to
chronological limitations, as well as the processes of
deposition, disturbance, and destruction, the techniques for
measuring ancient populations remain coarse-grained.
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.

The Interpretation of Regional Data

Beyond the broad-brush assessment of demographic trends and
site distribution in relation to environmental considerations,

657

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, use, and
long-term implications for anthropogenic environmental
impacts (e.g., Fisher et al., 2009).
In contrast, other 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 different 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 different processes) emerged. More recently, theorybuilding efforts have endeavored to rework and expand these
locational models to specically archaeological contexts with
a modicum of success. Continued work in this vein, and the
integration of some of the conceptual strengths from both
landscape and settlement pattern approaches are requisite to
understanding the complex web of relations that govern
human-to-human and human-to-environment interactions
across diverse regions over long expanses of time.

Looking Forward: The Critical Role of Settlement

Studies
The key feature and attribute of archaeology is its long
temporal panorama on human socioeconomic 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 tool kits necessary to
obtain this broadscale 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 contribute to questions of long-term societal
change. Why and how did inequality, demographic
nucleation, and concentrations of political power become
central to the current human career (see States and
Civilizations, Archaeology of) and in what ways did these
historical processes differ and parallel each other across the
globe (e.g., Peterson and Drennan, 2012; Smith et al., 2012).
Yet settlement pattern work has only relatively recently
entered the popular notion of this discipline, long wrongly
equated with and dened by excavation alone. Likewise,
many archaeologists nd it difcult to come to grips with

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Settlement and Landscape Archaeology

a regional perspective that has its strength in (broad) scalar

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; States and Civilizations, Archaeology of; Survey
and Excavation (Field Methods) in Archaeology.

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