Abstract

Environment and Variation in Historic Settlement Patterns in England
Track: Archaeology
Authors: Andrew Lowerre

Why are villages more common in some parts of England than others? This paper examines the relationships between regional variation in historic (medieval and later) settlement in England on the one hand and a range of environmental data on the other. I use a novel form of polygon boundary overlap analysis to test for associations or match patterns in variables like soils, precipitation and topography to see how they influenced the ways people chose to organize the places in which they lived.