From Sites to Systems
A single site is a dot; the real subject is the pattern of dots across a region, revealing economy, power, and movement. Landscape archaeology widens the lens from the trench to the territory, treating the whole terrain as the artifact.
Rank sites by size and function to reveal a hierarchy: many hamlets, fewer villages, towns, and a dominant center. Tiers gauge political complexity:
| Tiers | Political System | Organization |
|---|---|---|
| Two-tier | Chiefdom | Villages plus one center |
| Four-tier | State | Hamlet to capital administration |
The pattern of dots is a fossil of the organization that made it.
Central Places and Spacing
Central place theory (Christaller, 1933) models that people minimize travel, spacing central places evenly in hexagonal service areas with no gaps. Real landscapes deviate for rivers, coasts, or defense, and reading those pulls reconstructs ancient priorities.
Archaeologists test spacing with the nearest-neighbour statistic:
| Regime | Pattern | Implied Cause |
|---|---|---|
| Clustered | Huddled | Resource, market, or spring |
| Random | Unorganized | No principle detected |
| Regular | Dispersed | Land competition or spacing |
The visibility trap: What survives is skewed. Stone outlasts timber, and plows erase sites. A settlement pattern is always partly a preservation and discovery pattern.