Analysis of Settlement Patterns in Albania from the Iron Age through Greek and Roman Colonization and Integration (1100 BCE–395 CE)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Illyrians were an Indo-European group of people who inhabited a large expanse of the Balkans. As interactions with the Greeks and, later, the Romans increased, the sociopolitical organization of the Illyrians was undoubtedly affected. In this presentation, I present the results of my thesis research, the goal of which is to better understand how Greek colonization, followed by Roman incorporation, affected Illyrian settlement patterns in Albania. Utilizing a World Systems approach, I present colonies as semi-peripheral "cores" that act to draw people to them, like the case of towns during the industrial revolution in Europe. The data for the analysis were collected during the summer of 2017 via archival research and compiled into a gazetteer, which was imported into ArcGIS. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods are used in ArcGIS along with appropriate statistical tests in order to analyze the different relationships between site location and proximity to colonies and other features of interest throughout time. The geospatial analysis reveals certain patterns that suggest a statistically significant difference regarding the dispersal of sites. Specifically, there was significant clustering around "cores" in the Greek and Roman periods and this clustering was predominantly located in southern, coastal Albania.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22849