Settlement-Size Scaling among Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems in the New World.

ABSTRACT: Settlement size predicts extreme variation in the rates and magnitudes of many social and ecological processes in human societies. Yet, the factors that drive human settlement-size variation remain poorly understood. Size variation among economically integrated settlements tends to be heavy tailed such that the smallest settlements are extremely common and the largest settlements extremely large and rare. The upper tail of this size distribution is often formalized mathematically as a power-law function. Explanations for this scaling structure in human settlement systems tend to emphasize complex socioeconomic processes including agriculture, manufacturing, and warfare-behaviors that tend to differentially nucleate and disperse populations hierarchically among settlements. But, the degree

SUBMITTER: Haas WR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4633060 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature