The project aims at formulating methodological solutions for the problem of site functionality in Archaeology, specifically from a geographical perspective. Field surveys often register a range of different sites whose functionality is determined through a few diagnostic pottery sherds recovered on site, next, giving the sites very generic labels like farmstead, hamlet etc. Little attention is paid to functionality from the perspective of settlement patterns as a network, or based on specific local geography, which can be expected to have exercised significant influence. On a smaller scale, some studies have looked at the organisation of resource exploitation, using ABM (Agent Based Modeling), and landscape simulations. Other studies consider scaling as a function of population density, affecting labour specialisation, transport infrastructure and regional resource exploitation, and deploy visibility as criterion to measure relative prominence in settlement systems.
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[Website KU Leuven]