Beginning about A.D. 1250, the Zuni area of New Mexico witnessed a massive population aggregation in which the inhabitants of hundreds of widely dispersed villages relocated to a small number of large, architectecturally planned pueblos. Over the next century, 27 of these pueblos were constructed, occupied briefly, and then abandoned. Another dramatic settlement shift occurred about A. D. 1400, when the locus of population moved west to the "Cities of Cibola" discovered by Coronado in 1540. Keith Kintigh demonstrates how changing agricultural strategies and developing mechanisms of social integration contributed to these population shifts. In particular, he argues that occupants of the earliest large pueblos relied on runoff agriculture, but that gradually spring-and river-fed irrigation systems were adopted. Resultant strengthening of the mechanisms of social integration allowed the increased occupational stability of the protohistorical Zuni towns.

Since the rise of the first urban centers, the Middle Euphrates has functioned as a routeway between Mesopotamia and Syria. The towns and caravanseri located along the river served as important conduits of international exchange and as frontier towns buffering larger empires to the east and west. My research has investigated one small district along the Middle Euphrates. I have tried to document not only site distribution but also levels of communication between the middle valley of Euphrates and the southern Mesopotamian and western Syria core areas. Site distribution patterns show over and over again the location of entrepots, staging posts, and forts in this district. The chronological span of this study extends from ca 10,000 B.C. to A.D. 1980, an identifiable longue duree in which recurring cycles of conquest, depopulation, and revivification can be discerned. The area appears to have fared best during periods of intense competition among rival states for access to long-distance trade routes. However, when interactions between rival states in the stronger core areas of Syria and Mesopotamia resulted in the formation of empires whose capitals and interests lay far from the Middle Euphrates, the towns of this region perished. Nevertheless, the capture of the Middle Euphrates appears to have always been an important strategic battle in expansionistic efforts of such empires. I have analyzed the spatial distribution of sites in this region using data from a multi-stage field program. This program combined data from reconnaissance survey, intensive surface survey, intensive jeep survey, and test excavations at the Uruk period site of Tall Qraya with information from the broad-scale excavations at the regional center at Tall Harīrī and the provincial center at Tall al 'Ashārah. It is only with such archaeological data of long time depth gathered from many sources, in combination with information from textual sources, that one can attempt a "total history" of this area.

The study of prehistoric Maya settlements has been hampered by simplistic views of cultural ecology, over generalized ethnographic analogy, and a lack of attention to both natural and cultural site formation processes. As a result, Mayanists have tended to expect very little variety in archaeological features and have assumed cultural uniformity over wide ranges of time and space. Traditional research designs support these assumptions. Current knowledge of Maya social organization suggests that more structural variety may occur in Maya archaeological sites than is ordinarily discovered. Some of this variation is evidenced by features not currently visible on the ground-surface. The Nohmul Settlement pattern project employed a "purposive" sampling design to search for settlement variation over time and space. Several assumptions about surface-subsurface relationships were tested. Surface indications were not found to outline subsurface variety. Excavating at intervals from site center in both visible and "invisible" features, showed that the Nohmul community was affected by both centralizing and decentralizing influences and grouped into residential clusters resembling neighborhoods. The degree of centralization and the location of the clusters, as well as some of their characteristics, changed notably over Nohmul's 2500 year occupation.

The Mpumalanga escarpment hosts a series of stonewalled settlements that occur along a narrow belt between Carolina and Ohrigstad. These sites are unique as they have networks of linking roads, vast areas of terracing as well as large cattle kraals which do not occur in combination or to such an extent anywhere else in southern Africa. Furthermore these settlements occur at an altitude unfavourable for living or agricultural purposes. With the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) layers of data relating to the Mpumalanga escarpment and the settlements within the area over the past five hundred years are viewed and compared in order to further understand the placement and structure of these settlements.

The present study identifies settlement patterns of the Manteño culture within the cloud forest of southern Manabí by surveying, recording and analyzing the stone architecture found within the drainage basin of the Las Tusas River, Ecuador. The statistical methods used were: Triangulated Irregular Networks or TIN (for topography interpretations), K-means (to determine natural groups for structures based on their dimensions, shape, and wall thickness), Ripley’s K (to determine spatial nature of these groups) and Kernel Density (to visualize their spatial organization). The cloud forest ecotone of southern Manabí was an anthropogenic landscape during the late Integration period. The alluvial valleys of the upper Rio Blanco drainage basin do not represent a hinterland or a periphery occupation but a series of Manteño nucleated settlements raised on terraces and interconnected by strings of linear settlements and dispersed settlements throughout the rugged terrain of this landscape. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Focusing on the relationship between demography and sedentary behavior, this thesis explores changes to mobility strategies on the Northern Northwest Coast of North America between 11,000 and 5,000 cal BP. Drawing on a regional database of radiocarbon dates, it uses summed probability distributions (SPDs) of calibrated dates as a proxy for population change, in combination with syntheses of previously published technological, paleo environmental and settlement pattern data to test three hypotheses derived from the literature about the development of logistic mobility among maritime hunter-gatherers on the Northern Coast. In all, each of the hypotheses proposes that early peoples on the coast were foragers that utilized high levels of residential mobility, who later adopted collector (logistic) strategies. Two of the hypotheses emphasize the role of population growth and/or packing and resource distribution in this transformation, while the third emphasizes population replacement. Other issues addressed within this thesis are whether or not the forager-collector continuum, as it is used for terrestrial hunter-gatherers, can be applied to those in aquatic settings. Also explored, is the question of whether the available data is sufficient for making and/or testing claims about early mobility patterns in the region. The results of the demographic models suggest that while population levels were volatile, volatility declined through time and that there is no significant trend in either growth or decline of overall population levels throughout the region. This thesis also confirmed that significant changes to mobility, as evidenced by the emergence of semi-sedentary to sedentary living, begin to appear by ~7,000 cal BP. However, there appears to be little, if any correlation between the advent of more sedentary and logistic behavior and any of the variables tested here. Thus this author suggests, in agreement with Ames (1985; 2004) and Binford (2001) that the distribution of resources and labor organization needs within aquatic environments are sufficient without any other drivers for the development and intensification of logistic mobility. The principle analytic contribution of this research comes from the demographic modeling that relied on the construction of summed probability distributions. Though these methods have become commonplace in other settings (namely Europe), this thesis presents the first application of these methods within the time period and region covered. Moreover, this research is one of the only of its kind to address demographic histories within coastal landscapes that utilizes both marine and terrestrial 14C samples. In order to explore possible biases within the database, comparisons of marine and terrestrial SPDs were made between sub-sections of the region (i.e. Haida Gwaii, Southeast Alaska and the Dundas Islands). Though patterning between each of these areas was consistent, these comparative methods revealed an unexpected finding; a massive population crash throughout the region that began between ~9,000-8,800 cal BP and lasted till around 8,400 cal BP. Importantly, this crash was witnessed within all of the individual sub-areas and within SPDs made from both the marine and terrestrial 14C samples, though the reasons behind this collapse and verification of its existence require future research. However, finding this collapse at all further highlighted the need for use of correctly calibrated 14C dates, as the gap in 14C dates effectively disappears when using uncalibrated dates, which has been a longstanding tradition within Northwest archaeology.

In northwest Alaska, archaeologists hypothesize that environmental variability was a major factor in both growing coastal population density, with large aggregated villages and large houses, between 1000 and 500 years ago (ya), and subsequent decreasing population density between 500 ya and the contact era. After 500 ya people are thought to have dispersed to smaller settlements with smaller house sizes in coastal areas, and perhaps, upriver. This settlement pattern was identified through research at four site locations over 30 years ago. The changing geographic distribution of sites, associated settlement size, and house size has not been examined in detail. A more careful examination of changing northwest Alaskan settlement patterns is needed before larger questions about socio-economic organization can be addressed. I use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to evaluate the evidence for a geographic redistribution of Arctic peoples during the Late Holocene. The author constructed a database of settlement location and site attribute information, specifically the number of houses within each settlement and the size (m2). Data were collected from a dataset of Western Arctic National Parklands (WEAR), the Alaska Heritage Resource Survey (AHRS) database of archaeological sites in Alaska, 409 unpublished site reports and field notes curated by the National Park Service (NPS) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and the results of recent fieldwork in northwest Alaska. A total of 486 settlements were identified within the northwest Alaska with 128 settlements having temporal and site attribute data. The author incorporated settlement size data into a GIS database and then carried out global, Moran's I, local Moran's I, and local Getis-Ord spatial analyses to test whether settlement redistribution occurred and if key settlement locations shifted after 500 ya. The site attribute data (number of houses and average size of houses) are used to test the additional aspects of the proposed settlement pattern change after 500 ya. A total of 83 settlements with 465 houses are used to test if the average size of settlements and average house size changed after 500 ya. The results of the spatial analyses indicate no statistically significant patterns in the spatial distribution of settlements. Site attribute analysis shows no statistical difference in the average number of houses per village or the average size of houses before or after 500 ya. The results of this work build our understanding of regional settlement patterns during the late Holocene. By testing settlement pattern change, i.e. settlement distribution, settlement size, and house size, future research into settlement pattern change can begin to evaluate likely causes for the observed changes. My method, specifically the use of GIS as a method for testing settlement pattern change, can be applied to other regions and temporal scales.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Arizona State University, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.