Using event-history analysis to examine the causes of semi-sedentism among shifting cultivators: a case study of the Haudenosaunee,AD 1500–1700

Event-history analysis is often used in the social sciences to study the occurrence of particular events over the lifespan of individuals and the impact of various factors on the rate at which those events occur. Like individuals, settlements can be analyzed and important events, such as founding or abandonment, can be studied using this method. Thus, as Richard Paine (1992) has noted, the technique can be useful in archaeological investigations of settlement processes. In this research we use it to explore the causes of settlement abandonment among a temperate shifting cultivators in an attempt to better understand the ecology of this adaptation and in order to evaluate the merits of the method. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of northeastern North America present an interesting case study for applying event-history analysis to archaeological settlement dynamics because of the wealth of archaeological settlement data and detailed historic record that allows us to parse out historical factors and analyze the remaining ecological factors. We use event-history analysis as an alternative means for evaluating the relative and absolute effects of several variables that may have been predictive of the lifespan of settlements and the timing of their removal. The results suggest that the decision to move from a village was a complex process in which the population size of a village may have been the single most important, but not the only, determinant of settlement duration.     

Using multivariate statistics and fuzzy logic system to analyse settlement preferences in lowland areas of the temperate zone: an example from the Polish Lowlands

The influence of relief, as well as other environmental features such as soils or the hydrological regime, on prehistoric settlement patterns is commonly accepted. Settlement patterns and preferences changed over time in different areas, so it is difficult to formulate general rules of human behaviour throughout history. In lowland areas of the temperate zone, which lack radical relief changes and have widespread access to water resources, specific settlement preferences and significant changes in these preferences are difficult to interpret.New methods developed to address the problem of the settlement transformations as a result of prehistoric settlement and economic processes using multivariate statistics have been adapted for the middle part of the Great Poland Lowland. In this region, data from the Polish Archaeological Record Project database have been used.Models of the dependence between geomorphological features and settlement intensity form the basis for estimating changes in prehistoric settlements. The degree of preference (or avoidance) is a nonparametric function of the number of archaeological sites observed in the area relative to the number of sites expected from a completely random pattern. The most crucial factors for settlement are distance to plateau edges, distance to water bodies, and the wetness index. The results show that the entire investigated area is more or less suitable for settlement, but the most occupied terrains are the areas near plateau edges.     

平粮台龙山文化遗存分析

平粮台城址是新石器时代中晚期域址中非常典型的一个代表,本文借鉴西方环境考古与聚落考古学的理论和方法,着重从聚落形态的角度出发,用考古材料研究社会关系,具体在各种物质遗存中从政治权利、阶层分化、生产生活、组织规划、民风民俗、神灵信仰等方面抽取提炼出非物质的信息,重建其社会组织结构,复原地区聚落模式和社会复杂化进程,以取得...     

陕西窑洞传统乡村聚落景观基因组图谱构建及特征分析

窑洞聚落是黄土高原最典型的聚落形态，它具有悠久的历史、深厚的精神文化内涵以及独特的文化景观特征，在陕西渭北地区和陕北黄土高原丘陵沟壑区分布广泛。本研究基于传统聚落景观基因组图谱的相关研究，以陕西31个窑洞传统乡村聚落为研究对象，按照“单个窑洞聚落、多个窑洞聚落、特定研究区”三个层次，构建了窑洞聚落的典型院落图谱、空间序列图谱、院落模式图谱、排列模式图谱和空间格局图谱五大类型图谱体系。通过分析窑洞聚落景观基因组图谱的基本特征，进一步验证了构建窑洞聚落景观基因组图谱的必要性和迫切性。本研究旨在丰富景观基因组图谱层次，推动景观基因研究向区域层面发展，并为窑洞聚落景观基因信息链修复及景观基因区域识别系统构建等相关研究奠定基础，为保护与发展窑洞聚落提供科学依据。     

Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Population Trends in Northeastern North America

Abstract

The Seneca are an original member of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and one of several Northern Iroquoian societies that inhabited northeastern North America. This research explores their population history during the 16th and 17th centuries. Previous studies of Northern Iroquoian populations identified population increase until contact with Europeans, no evidence of pre-contact diseases, and drastic depopulation resulting from interaction with European societies. Similar patterns were expected in this research. Combining archaeological settlement data collected with non- and minimally invasive survey techniques and ethnohistorical information, this article estimates the population trends of the Seneca. The results show a highly complex population history that includes pre-contact population losses, in- and out-migration episodes, significant losses from Old World diseases, and rapid population recovery. The field methods employed here may have wider applicability for the demographic archaeology of other similarly adapted cultures.     

Long-Term Regional Landscape Change in the Northern Tequila Region of Jalisco,Mexico

The Tequila Valleys, in Jalisco, Mexico, are well-known in archaeology for an early complex society known as the Teuchitlán tradition (350 b.c.–a.d. 450/500), but later developments have received little attention. Here I report on the first systematic, full-coverage survey of the Tequila region north of the Tequila volcano. I explore the ways in which the societies that occupied this territory experienced sociopolitical change diachronically by investigating settlement scale, integration, complexity, and boundedness. Through the use of these core features, I analyze how each changed in varying ways, resulting in patterns that do not conform to static societal categories. Interestingly, there is no evidence that a large polity controlled the entire region at any point in the sequence. Results indicate a dynamic sociopolitical landscape that did not develop along any predetermined pathway.     

地理学视角下的国内农村聚居研究综述

农村聚居是农村居民与周围自然、经济、社会、文化环境相互作用的结果,是人类聚居学的重要研究内容。随着新农村建设、农村土地流转、城乡统筹、新型农村社区建设等政策与措施的相继出台,农村聚居研究日益凸显出重要的实践意义与学术价值。本文对近十年来国内地理学关于农村聚居区位、形态、规模与等级、功能组织、演变机理、优化调控以及聚居类型与区划等研究内容的主要观点作了较详细的介绍,指出了地理学在农村聚居基础理论、研究内容、研究方法和技术等方面的薄弱环节,并展望其未来的研究趋势。     

An ethnoarchaeological inductive model for predicting archaeological site location: A case-study of pastoral settlement patterns in the Val di Fiemme and Val di Sole (Trentino,Italian Alps)

In this paper I propose a novel integration of inductive predictive modelling and ethnoarchaeology. The case study concerns seasonal upland pastoral settlement patterns in the eastern Italian Alps. A sample of modern pastoral sites has been selected, and their relationships with environmental variables have been analyzed in order to create a model to predict the location of archaeological upland pastoral sites. The model has been tested with modern and archaeological control samples. It has proved to be useful for predicting the location of specific site categories. Ethnoarchaeological fieldwork has been carried out in the same alpine sample area, which has enhanced the interpretative potential of the proposed model, suggesting that the spatial of the analyzed sites could well be related to their dairying function. The creation of ethnoarchaeological locational models with a predictive potential may be very important not only in helping to tackle some theoretical and methodological problems in predictive modelling, but also in enhancing the importance of ethnoarchaeology in landscape archaeology projects.     

Chiefdoms and states in the Yuncheng Basin and the Chifeng region: A comparative analysis of settlement systems in North China

Regional settlement datasets for the Yuncheng Basin and the Chifeng region are re-analyzed for comparison so as to reconstruct differing patterns of community development at local and supra-local scales. A methodological implication of this reanalysis is that comparing settlement areas and surface artifact densities between projects requires special attention to how the data were recorded so as to put them on the same measurement scale. The analytical approaches originally taken to reconstructing community organization in the two regions, while differing in several respects, are shown to produce highly compatible results, permitting a comparison of the two trajectories with a sound empirical foundation. Neolithic settlement began much earlier in Chifeng, but rates of demographic and community growth were extremely slow. In Yuncheng, early village growth was much more dramatic. Multiple chiefly districts of modest size emerged in both regions, but those of Yuncheng, despite their shorter developmental trajectory, had substantially larger populations. Their central settlements, in particular, grew to be much larger than those in Chifeng and the special activities carried out at these centers differed between the two regions. A poorly understood, but not contemporaneous, demographic disruption punctuated both sequences. It was followed by the emergence of political integration on a much larger scale in the Yuncheng Basin, focused on a single settlement an order of magnitude larger than its predecessors. In Chifeng, regional population soared far beyond previous levels, but political integration remained persistently small in scale.     

To see or to be seen… is that the question? An evaluation of palaeolithic sites’ visual presence and their role in social organization

Visibility is one of the most common features considered when analyzing site location; visual control of a territory is usually considered to be a desirable characteristic for a prehistoric settlement. However, the role that visibility could have played in the perception of sites, as a significant element of palaeolithic landscapes, has been rarely evaluated. Sites can act not only as settlements but as places for population aggregations, social interactions and symbolic activities; in this context, the relevance presence of a site within the landscape could have been an influencing factor in site location preferences. This paper focuses on the visual presence of a set of sites from Late palaeolithic Cantabria (Northern Iberian Peninsula), and evaluates how the way they were perceived could have been related to their role in the social organization of foraging communities.     

国外乡村聚落地理研究进展及近今趋势

乡村聚落地理的研究是乡村地理学的重要研究领域。本文通过对大量的文献资料分析,系统梳理了国外乡村聚落地理的研究动态,将其研究历程划分为:萌芽起步、初步发展、拓展变革、转型重构四个阶段。对乡村聚落地理的研究内容体系进行归纳总结,主要集中在聚落布局、聚落形态与分类、聚落景观、聚落用地、聚落生态等方面。在此基础上对近今乡村聚落地理的研究趋势及发展方向进行了分析,发现乡村聚落的人文社会化和乡村重构的研究趋势。以期能对国内乡村聚落地理的研究提供借鉴和参考。     

FARMERS,HERDERS OR TRADESMEN? ANALYSING SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF THE MIDDLE AND LATE BRONZE AGE ON THE SARFIROUZABAD PLAIN,KERMANSHAH, WESTERN IRAN

The highland plains of western Iran have been investigated with varying intensity. The Sarfirouzabad Plain located in the south of Kermanshah province, although visited perfunctorily, has not previously been studied systematically, despite attractive ecological and environmental conditions. In 2009, a team from Tehran University conducted a systematic and intensive field survey in the region to identify Bronze Age settlements and to assess their location in relation to ecological, environmental and cultural factors that may have impacted their distribution on the plain. The surveyed area was walked in transects at 20‐metre intervals and resulted in the identification of 332 archaeological sites from different cultural periods, which added much to the limited knowledge about the history of this region. Twenty‐four of these settlement sites belong to the Middle and Late Bronze Age horizons. This study uses GIS to map the distribution of archaeological materials and construct spatial models to determine the significance of the distribution patterns of the Bronze Age sites.     

国内外农村居民点区位研究评述

随着人类经济社会的发展,居民点的外在特征和空间结构也在不断的演化与变迁,居住地点的选址和布局最能反映出人类活动与地理环境之间的相互影响与作用机制。目前国内外在城市居住区位研究方面已经形成大量研究成果,相比之下,农村居民点相关研究还存在一定滞后。文章从居民点区位影响因素、区位演变、居民点分布和等级结构四方面对国外相关研究进行了评述,梳理了国内农村居民点区位研究的相关内容,在此基础上对存在的问题进行了讨论和总结,并对今后研究内容进行了展望。     

“They want a different life”: Rural northern settlement dynamics and pathways to homelessness in Yellowknife and Inuvik,Northwest Territories

Visible homelessness in the Northwest Territories, Canada is often described as a recent phenomenon by policy makers and the popular media alike. Indeed, since the late 1990s, homeless shelters in Yellowknife and Inuvik report a steady increase in demand for beds and other support for homeless people. Homelessness in these two communities disproportionately affects Aboriginal northerners, however little is known about their individual pathways to homelessness. Moreover, homelessness in the Northwest Territories is often portrayed as an issue confined to larger “urbanizing” regional centres, yet many homeless Aboriginal northerners have originated from small, rural settlement communities. Despite this, little concern has been paid to how factors at the small community level intersect with more visible forms of homelessness in larger, urban centres, not to mention how these intersections shape a territorial geography of homelessness. In this article, I aim to uncover and explore the often hidden factors at the northern rural settlement level that ultimately contribute to more visible forms of homelessness in northern urban centres. I suggest that uneven and fragmented social, institutional, and economic geographies result in a unique landscape of vulnerability to homelessness in the Northwest Territories. This geography emerges through the production of particular dynamics between rural settlement communities and northern urban centres. In particular, four main factors represent these rural‐urban dynamics: 1) the attractions of opportunity in northern urban centres; 2) rural settlement‐urban institutional flows; 3) chronic housing need in the settlements; and, 4) disintegrating social relationships in the settlements. I explore the particular ways in which these factors influence rural‐urban migration among the homeless population and what roles this mobility plays in individual pathways to homelessness.     

Multiproxy environmental archaeology of Neolithic settlements at Osłonki,Poland, 5500–4000 BC

Abstract

Archaeological research on Neolithic settlements (ca. 5500–4000 cal BC) at and near Os?onki, Poland, is complemented by palaeoenvironmental investigations in three basins with biogenic sediments adjacent to the archaeological sites. Research included sedimentology, palynology, malacology and cladoceran analysis. Complementary lines of evidence indicate that Linear Pottery pioneer farmers of the late 6th millennium BC caused minimal environmental impact, but intensive settlement and land use by the Brze?? Kujawski Group during the 5th millennium BC triggered pronounced human-induced effects on the local landscape. Of particular significance is the evidence for erosion and aeolian ablation of exposed soil in the vicinity of the Neolithic settlements, presumably reflecting widespread land clearance, agricultural activity and settlement construction.     

Multiscalar Settlement Ecology Study of Piedmont Village Tradition Communities,A.D. 1000–1600

This research analyzes the spatial patterning of settlement sites in relation to landscape features to determine the factors that influenced settlement location choices for Late Precontact (A.D. 1000–1600) Piedmont Village Tradition (PVT) communities in the Yadkin, Dan, Haw, and Eno river valleys of the Piedmont Southeast. We employ geographic information systems to estimate characteristics of past landscapes, nearest neighbor analysis to describe basic settlement patterns, and discriminant function analysis to determine spatial correlations between settlements and landscape features. We examine the data on three scales and also assess potential changes over time. Results indicate that settlement location choices were broadly similar on the regional scale, but specific influences varied between and within valleys and over time. When examined with current archaeological, ethnohistoric, and linguistic information, the results suggest that PVT communities engaged in regional interaction networks in highly variable ways and that the relationship between subsistence and settlement varied according to settlement size. Using these results, we explore the roles PVT communities played in the formation and maintenance of natural and cultural landscapes in the Late Precontact Southeast.     

The gravity model: monitoring the formation and development of the Tripolye culture giant-settlements in Ukraine

The formation, development and decline of the Tripolye culture giant-settlements in Chalcolitic Ukraine are strictly linked to complex processes of migration and settlement relocation. Despite being traceable through pottery typological analyses linked to contextual seriations, their identification is sometime not obvious. This paper shows how the application of the ‘gravity model’ not only facilitates their recognition, but it also helps increase the reliability of determining diachronic and/or synchronic occupations, shedding at the same time light upon the crucial ‘internal’ development of single settlements. Instead of clear-cut consecutive occupations, a more gradual settlement rotation with some synchronous phases seems to have prevailed.     

关于聚落考古的方法问题

所谓聚落考古,就是以聚落为对象,研究其具体形态及其所反映的社会形态,进而研究聚落形态的演变所反映的社会形态的发展轨迹。聚落考古往往要与环境考古相结合,才能取得较好的效果。我们讲的聚落形态不是遗址形态。在聚落形态没有根本改变的情况下,它所反映的社会面貌或社会组织结构也应当没有本质的改变。有些聚落中的遗迹保存得比较好,不但可以进行功能区的划分,还可以进一步了解各功能区乃至单体建筑之间的联系,借以复原当时的社会。要做到这一点,仅仅依据地层关系和文化分期难以达到目的,还需要引入地面的概念,要设法揭示完整的地面。聚落调查的目的不仅是要了解有没有遗址,也不仅仅是了解遗址中有哪几个时期的东西。从聚落考古的要求来说,至少要了解遗址中是单一文化期的聚落,还是有几个时期不同范围的聚落。     

水与城:成都平原史前聚落形态研究综述

为了探索正在急剧消失的成都平原"林盘"聚落形态与史前聚落的关系,本文借由聚落考古与环境考古,比较集中地综览了平原上史前各聚落城址之间的历时性共性,对史前城址聚落群与成都平原的地貌、水系、文化习尚、宗教信仰等关系的研究,以及各聚落城址的内部特征予以研究述评,以求探究成都平原上这种"林盘"聚落形态与史前聚落城址及水的关系。     

16—20世纪滇池流域的乡村聚落与人地关系——以柴河三角洲为例

本文选取滇池南缘的柴河三角洲为研究对象,试图在小尺度范围内复原明清以来柴河三角洲乡村聚落的发展、分布,并进一步揭示明清以降在人类活动加剧的背景下滇池流域的人地互动。研究发现,从明代中后期至清代,柴河三角洲在滇池水利开发、三角洲营田技术的运用以及南岸入滇河流自然沉积的共同作用下得以迅速沉积,最终形成于18世纪。聚落随着三角洲的沉积不断向滇池岸边拓展。受到土地开发过程和土壤肥力分布等因素的影响,聚落分布的密度则从三角洲上部到底端逐渐递减。