MODULE #10: SETTLEMENT AND LANDSCAPE
3-4 hours
A. Overview: In this module, students will learn about how we study the changing distributions of human settlements over the changing prehistoric landscape. These settlement patterns result from relationships between people and from a complex set of environmental, economic, and population-related variables. Students will learn about the distinctions between the study of settlements, households, communities, and the distribution of communities across the landscape.
B. Objectives:
1. Define the concept of settlement archaeology
2. Show how households are chronicles of human interactions and communities
3. Describe the concept of the community and its importance to archaeology
4. Demonstrate how environment and culture interact to produce a particular distribution of communities in a given region.
5. Explain how the concepts of population and carrying capacity are related.
C. Principles:
1. Basic archaeological skills: how to interpret data
2. Real world problem solving: examine modern day examples
3. Social relevance: compare what we learn from the past to the present
4. Communication: report generation and publication
5. Stewardship: protection of even small archaeological sites provides important data regarding settlement and land use.
D. Instructional Procedures: This module is primarily lecture and student activity. Throughout the lecture, students are asked questions to ensure they are grasping the concepts introduced. It is important to tie in real world experiences to the content, so the questions ask the students to think of some of the concepts in the context of today’s world. Powerpoint is useful to help identify concepts but the lecture can be taught with traditional technology (whiteboard, etc.).
E. Assessment: Students will be assessed by an in-class activity and completion of an out-of-class paper.
F. Lecture Outline:
1. Discuss where people live; how do they choose their locations
2. Define a household unit: what happened there; artifact patterns; modern day analogies (Out of the Past video on Households)
3. Define communities: arrangement of structures within a single group; how are these studied; what can we learn from them; modern day analogies (Catalhoyuk; Teotihuacan activity areas)
4. Settlement patterns-density and distribution of communities; reasons for distribution; environmental change, interactions between people, shifts in population density; modern day analogies (Maya)
5. Exchange systems-trade, reciprocity, redistribution, markets
G. Activities: Settlement pattern activity
H. Readings: Fagan, Chapter 10