settlement patterns: further reading terns, in turn, through a wider segment of space, might be termed a complex pattern These 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 agricultural production and others maintaining hunter-gatherer economies Classifying the variety of settlements presents its own difficulties, with definitions differing by scholar and discipline In general, however, much of the literature includes the following settlement types: camps, villages, towns, ceremonial centers, village clusters, and, eventually, cities Generally speaking, these classifications represent advancing complexity based on differing social, economic, and political determinants, and it should be further noted that characteristics are often complementary and overlapping The 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 definite community plan Camps are most closely affi liated 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 first human being until at least the historic period, or the period when Europeans first arrived and began recording written history A village occupies an area of several acres The number of dwellings might run as high as 30 to 40 The appearance of sturdier structures, which remained in place and were occupied for extended periods of time; deeper refuse deposits; and some level of village planning are in evidence The 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 neighboring villages so closely related culturally that it is assumed constant contact was common and sociopolitical organization 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 often 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, 973 including Cuello in Belize (possibly as early as 2400 b.c.e until 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 to 600 c.e in Peru are all examples of villages or village clusters with a ceremonial center in common The key relation in settlement is between settled life, domestication, and population Greater population density becomes 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 nonagricultural members of society, such the elite, craftsmen, and soldiers In one sense, towns and cities are simply greater agglomerations of persons gathered in a single area with refined abilities to domesticate and store foodstuffs, 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; building techniques and materials; cities; climate and geography; death and burial practices; empires and dynasties; exploration; foreigners and barbarians; gender structures and roles; government organization; hunting, fishing, and gathering; laws and legal codes; literature; migration and population movements; natural disasters; nomadic and pastoral societies; sacred sites; seafaring and navigation; slaves and slavery; social collapse and abandonment; social organization; towns and villages; trade and exchange; war and conquest FURTHER READING Tim Cornell and John Matthews, Atlas of the Roman World (New York: Facts On File, 1982) Tom Dillehay, The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory (New York: Basic Books, 2000) Gary Feinman, ed., Settlement Pattern Studies in the Americas: Fifty Years since Virú (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999) Daniel J Gargola, Lands, Laws, and Gods: Magistrates and Ceremony in the Regulation of Public Lands in Republican Rome (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995) Victor Davis Hanson, The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) Oswyn Murray and Simon Price, eds The Greek City: From Homer to Alexander (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) David O’Connor, “Urbanism in Bronze Age Egypt and Northeast Afrcia.” In The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals, and Towns, eds Thurstan Shaw, Paul Sinclair, Bassey Andah, et al (London: 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)