Expanding the Scope of Settlement Analysis

Comparing archaeological settlement systems with rank-size graphs: a measure of shape and statistical confidence

“…The rank-size graph was adopted into regional settlement studies in archaeology from geography nearly 30 years ago [2,6,[9][10][11]13,[18][19][20]. For geographers it has been a way of characterizing the evenness or unevenness of population distribution across the settlements in a region.…”

The Broken Past: Fractals in Archaeology

“…The rank-size rule has been applied to archaeological data in various contexts (e.g., Adams, 1981;Cavanagh and Laxton, 1994;Hodder, 1979;Hodder and Orton, 1976, pp. 69-73;Johnson, 1980;Laxton and Cavanagh, 1995;Paynter, 1983). It is noteworthy that this is an empirical rule and does not depend on any sociological theory, like Zipf's "Law of the Least Effort."…”

Stone circles and the structure of Bronze Age society

“…This rule states that the size of a settlement should be inversely proportional to its rank; thus, for example, if the largest settlement occupies 10 km 2 , the second largest should cover 5 km 2 , the third 3.3 km 2 , and so on. Archaeological studies employing the rank-size rule in this way are numerous (Johnson, 1972(Johnson, , 1977(Johnson, , 1980Hammond, 1974;Hodder and Orton, 1976;Hodder, 1979;Pearson, 1980;Paynter, 1982Paynter, , 1983Falconer and Savage, 1995;Liu, 1996;Boyle, 1996;McAndrews et al, 1997;Mudar, 1999;Peterson and Drennan, 2005;Drennan and Peterson, 2006; Muller-Scheessel, Table 4.…”