settlement scaling theory (Other Keyword)

1-4 (4 Records)

Artifact Density and Population Density in Bronze Age China (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Cooper. Scott Ortman.

This is an abstract from the "Peopling the Past: Critically Evaluating Settlement and Regional Population Estimates with New Methods and Demographic Modeling" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A common method of estimating population is to multiply a settlement area by an occupational density. Empirical studies show that occupational density generally increases with settlement size but estimating occupational density when structural remains are not...


Artifact-Based Measures for Scaling Research in the Rio Grande Pueblos (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlyn E. Davis. Scott Ortman.

Initial applications of settlement scaling theory focused on measures derived from the built environment, such as house density and settled area. Although this is appropriate, the theory actually focuses on the role of social networks in socioeconomic rates, and thus connects to a variety of artifact-based measures of such rates. In this paper, we develop these connections using data from the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico. We first compare pueblo room areas to show that socioeconomic outputs...


Scaling Analysis of Prehistoric Wyoming Camp Sites—Implications for Hunter-Gatherer Social Dynamics (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Ortman. Laura Scheiber. Zachary Cooper.

Recent studies suggest many properties of human settlements vary in predictable ways with population size. These studies have shown, for example, that more populous settlements are systematically denser on average than less populous settlements in a wide range of societies. In this presentation we examine this densification effect in mobile hunting and gathering societies by analyzing a database of information for prehistoric stone circle (tipi ring) sites in the plains and intermontane basins...


Settlement scaling theory, specialization, and the Greek and Roman world (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only John Hanson.

In the last decade, there has been increasing interest in using urbanism as a means of investigating the economy of the Greek and Roman world. The most recent research on the relationship between urbanization and economic growth suggests that the correlation between them is not as straightforward as once thought. There is a growing corpus of theory, however, that suggests that modern settlements act as ‘social reactors’, which increase the number of opportunities for interactions between...