Colonists, who might be Roman citizens, veterans, or al-
lies, received small plots of land to farm in their new com-
munities. Vast tracts of land were confi scated from Rome’s
defeated enemies and designated ager publicus. Despite the
eff orts of some Roman lawmakers to limit individual hold-
ings, wealthy Romans came to control much of this land. Th e
rich landowners used slave labor to operate their large estates,
which were called latifundia. In the 130s and 120s b.c.e. the
plebeian tribunes Gaius and Tiberius Gracchus attempted to
enforce the limits on holdings of ager publicus and distribute
the recovered land to less fortunate Romans. Th ey encoun-
tered stiff resistance from the Senate; even though both men
were ultimately murdered in riots, they did manage to settle
thousands of Romans on small plots of Italian land. Such con-
fl icts over land possession and ownership continued into the
fi rst century b.c.e. Th e proscriptions instituted by Sulla in the
80s led to the confi scation of tremendous amounts of land. A
number of the Roman general Sulla’s associates gained wealth
by purchasing confi scated estates. Many landowners contin-
ued to rely heavily on slaves to work their estates, as the great
slave revolt led by Spartacus suggests. Civil war, debt crises,
and the need to fi nd land to reward Roman veterans made
the Italian real estate market especially volatile in the fi nal
decades of the Republic.
Given the size and varied nature of the Roman Empire, it
is diffi cult to make generalizations about settlement patterns
in the Imperial period. Farms of varying sizes, villages, towns,
and rural sanctuaries as well as seasonal shelters for farmers
and shepherds could be found dotting the landscape. While
some individuals amassed large landholdings and debt fre-
quently forced peasants to sell their land, the practices of di-
viding inherited land among heirs and colonizing conquered
regions tended to create new smallholders. Many provinces
received groups of Roman colonists, especially in the early
empire. Some provincial cities grew substantially under Ro-
man rule due to their status as provincial capitals, their role
in the transportation of foodstuff s to Rome, the presence of
military units, or the patronage of the emperor. Alexandria,
Carthage, and Antioch became particularly important. Other
cities and regions suff ered from natural disasters, revolts, or
proximity to volatile border areas. Th e relative peace of the
fi rst two centuries of the Common Era saw an increase in
population and rural settlement in many regions. But begin-
ning in the late second century c.e. plague, civil wars, and
Germanic invasions caused a decline in population and rural
settlement in some places.THE AMERICAS
BY J. J. GEORGE
Settlement patterns in the ancient Americas overlap with tra-
ditional migration theories on the origin of the fi rst peoples.
Th e traditional theory held that the fi rst Americans crossed
Berengia, the Bering Sea land bridge from Siberia to Alaska,
around 11,500 years ago. Th e term bridge is somewhat mis-leading because some models suggest that open land was
in excess of 1,000 miles wide, aff ording ample territory for
multiple bands of persons traveling on foot to make their way
into the New World. Why did they come? In brief, they came
because they were following megafauna, or large animals
hunted for food, such as mammoths, mastodons, bison, and
giant sloths—the latter as large as 20 feet tall. While Berengia
is now under water, save for a scattering of islands, during
the period of initial settlement much of the earth’s water was
locked up in ice sheets that covered much of Canada, dra-
matically lowering the earth’s sea levels and exposing greater
expanses of land.
Th e appearance of the fi rst Americans coincided neatly
with evidence indicating that an ice-free corridor had opened
between two large Canadian ice sheets referred to as the Lau-
rentide and Cordilleran, allowing these early migrants access
to nonglaciated lands in mid-latitude America. Th ese origi-
nal inhabitants are now called Clovis people, named aft er
the town in New Mexico where their fl uted spear points used
for hunting mammoth were fi rst found in 1932. Clovis and
Clovis-like points are recorded from the late Pleistocene in
Alaska to Panama and in Ca lifornia and Nova Scotia. Follow-
ing this model, the fi rst settlements spread slowly southward,
eventually reaching the edge of North America to the east
and the southern tip of South America.
However, a well-studied site called Monte Verde in south-
ern Chile, dated to around 12,500 years ago, calls into ques-
tion the traditional model of a slow and orderly procession
southward. Th e site contains the buried remnants of simple
residential structures, stone tools including bifacial projec-
tile points—a stone tool with two sides or faces worked to
form an edge for scraping or cutting—and preserved edible
and medicinal plants. Th e question, then, is how did these
peoples reach so far south so fast? A competing settlement
theory posits a much more rapid southern advance via open
coastal routes along the Pacifi c Coast into Alaska and north-
western Canada and eventually south to Peru and Chile by
approximately 12,500 years ago. Any remnant archaeologi-
cal data that might pinpoint and date coastal settlements are
unfortunately lost; as the last ice age receded, rising sea levels
worldwide advanced inland, burying the previous coastline
and along with it any markers of coastal inhabitation. To date,
then, there is agreement only in that the fi rst Americans were
Homo sapiens sapiens, who were in North and South America
by Clovis times, about 11,500 years ago.
Viewed archaeologically, settlement patterns are, like
any prehistoric residue, the incomplete and fragmentary
markings of something that was once vital and whole, essen-
tially a reconstruction of the physical and material presence
of long-disappeared persons. A settlement might be thought
of as an archaeologically discernible site, a unit of space that
was characterized during some culturally defi nable period of
time by the presence of one or more dwellings or structures.
Th e arrangement of structures on a site with respect to one
another forms unit patterns. Th e arrangement of these pat-972 settlement patterns: The Americas0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i972 972 10/10/07 2:30:37 PM