Social Sciences in China, 2025

Vol. 46, No. 2, 2025

Settlement Patterns and the Documentation of a Heterogeneous Past

(Abstract)

Gary M. Feinman

Over the last 75 years, settlement pattern studies have underpinned the collection of a tsunami of new and multiscalar information in archaeology. These findings, which provide an empirical record of deep historical change across six continents, serve as a foundation for new perspectives on the emergence of human collectivities or cooperative arrangements (e.g. communities, states, empires) and how they varied and changed over time. At the same time, settlement studies helped usher in greater attention to time/space variability in archaeology, thereby introducing more populational as opposed to categorical conceptualizations that better represent how people behave and interact. Here, the primary focus is on China’s deep past and the new findings and perspectives that have emerged over the last three to four decades with the expanding applications of systematic archaeological surveys and other settlement pattern investigations. The findings from these research efforts help provide a less linear, less categorical, less homogenized, and more diverse perspective on China’s rich past. At the same time, as in other global contexts, they help refresh our conceptual lenses from the more static and teleological notions of human history and the past that have long been held yet no longer fit the broadening suite of empirical facts.

Keywords: settlement patterns, Chinese history, archaeological survey, comparative governance