terns, in turn, through a wider segment of space, might be
termed a complex pattern. Th ese complex patterns relate to
the adjustments of human beings and culture to environment
and to organization of society in a broad sense.
Over time a range of settlement types developed, some
coalescing into complex settled social units based on agri-
cultural production and others maintaining hunter-gatherer
economies. Classifying the variety of settlements presents its
own diffi culties, with defi nitions diff ering by scholar and dis-
cipline. In general, however, much of the literature includes
the following settlement types: camps, villages, towns, cer-
emonial centers, village clusters, and, eventually, cities. Gen-
erally speaking, these classifi cations represent advancing
complexity based on diff ering social, economic, and political
determinants, and it should be further noted that character-
istics are oft en complementary and overlapping.
Th e simplest archaeological discernible site, or camp,
would cover sites with areas between a few hundred square feet
and perhaps an acre, where midden (refuse) deposits are thin
and impermanent, lightly built shelters were erected without
any defi nite community plan. Camps are most closely affi li-
ated with hunter-gatherer and semisedentary units. Camps
persisted in areas such as the eastern United States, Brazil,
Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean from the time
of the fi rst human being until at least the historic period, or
the period when Europeans fi rst arrived and began recording
written history.
A village occupies an area of several acres. Th e number
of dwellings might run as high as 30 to 40. Th e appearance of
sturdier structures, which remained in place and were occu-
pied for extended periods of time; deeper refuse deposits; and
some level of village planning are in evidence. Th e spatial and
temporal distribution of villages is similar to that of camps,
which they began to replace or at least to supplement. It would
be common for a village to be politically dominated by a chief
with extended kin or clan affi liations. Examples of this type
of settlement range from the Tehuacán Valley of Mexico, with
pit houses and domesticated plant use in evidence by 3400
b.c.e.; to Hopewell Indian sites in the American Midwest by
roughly 200 b.c.e.; to coastal villages in British Columbia
and Southeastern Alaska, with evidence of plank houses by
200 b.c.e.; to the burial mounds and earthworks of the Adena
people in Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia between 1000
b.c.e. and 200 c.e..
Village clusters and ceremonial centers are closely related
and particularly common, representing a number of neigh-
boring villages so closely related culturally that it is assumed
constant contact was common and sociopolitical organiza-
tion overlapped. It was not uncommon for these affi liated
villages to share a ceremonial center. Unlike camps, which
lacked complex patterns and seemed not to cluster, religious
sites oft en became linked by larger social and ceremonial
considerations and thus could be called a village cluster.
Hopewell and Adena temple mound complexes between 1000
b.c.e. and 200 c.e.; Mayan centers in the Central America,including Cuello in Belize (possibly as early as 2400 b.c.e. un-
til 500 c.e.) and Tikal (250–850 c.e.) in Petén; Guatemala in
the second through ninth centuries c.e.; Chavín between 900
and 200 b.c.e.; and Moche from perhaps 1 to 600 c.e. in Peru
are all examples of villages or village clusters with a ceremo-
nial center in common.
Th e key relation in settlement is between settled life, do-
mestication, and population. Greater population density be-
comes possible with advanced domestication, where people
tend to favor plants and produce food in surplus, which is
necessary to support larger populations as well as nonagri-
cultural members of society, such the elite, craft smen, and
soldiers. In one sense, towns and cities are simply greater ag-
glomerations of persons gathered in a single area with refi ned
abilities to domesticate and store foodstuff s, such that by the
second through eighth centuries of the Common Era a city
like Mexico’s Teotihuacán, it became possible to support a
population estimated at around 125,000.See also agriculture; borders and frontiers; build-
ing techniques and materials; cities; climate and
geography; death and burial practices; empires and
dynasties; exploration; foreigners and barbarians;
gender structures and roles; government organiza-
tion; hunting, fishing, and gathering; laws and legal
codes; literature; migration and population move-
ments; natural disasters; nomadic and pastoral so-
cieties; sacred sites; seafaring and navigation; slaves
and slavery; social collapse and abandonment; so-
cial organization; towns and villages; trade and ex-
change; war and conquest.FURTHER READING
Tim Cornell and John Matthews, Atlas of the Roman World (New
York: Facts On File, 1982).
Tom Dillehay, Th e Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory
(New York: Basic Books, 2000).
Gary Feinman, ed., Settlement Pattern Studies in the Americas: Fift y
Years since Virú (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1999).
Daniel J. Gargola, Lands, Laws, and Gods: Magistrates and Cer-
emony in the Regulation of Public Lands in Republican Rome
(Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press,
1995).
Victor Davis Hanson, Th e Other Greeks: Th e Family Farm and the
Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999).
Oswyn Murray and Simon Price, eds. Th e Greek City: From Homer
to Alexander (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
David O’Connor, “Urbanism in Bronze Age Egypt and Northeast
Afrcia.” In Th e Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals, and Towns,
eds. Th urstan Shaw, Paul Sinclair, Bassey Andah, et al. (Lon-
don: Routledge, 1993).
Evon Z. Vogt and Richard M. Leventhal, eds., Prehistoric Settlement
Patterns: Essays in Honor of Gordon R. Willey (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1983).settlement patterns: further reading 9730895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i973 973 10/10/07 2:30:37 PM