Changes in settlement patterns are often argued to reflect climatic change, which may make certain areas more or less hospitable depending on the adaptability of subsistence practices. This study models the impact of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events on phases of occupation and abandonment over the past 4500 years at Pashimbi in the Ecuadorian Amazon. While earlier occupations and abandonments seem to correlate with climatic events, associations post-3000 BP are less clear, potentially indicating that populations adapted to wetter conditions and, the authors argue, that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation was not the main determinant in the decision to abandon settlements.

Over the history of Maya studies, archaeologists have proposed various models for the structure of Maya settlements and their use of the landscape. The introduction of lidar to Maya studies, and the wealth of data this technology yielded, has many of these ideas coming under renewed study. Some of the most prominent models discussed in the last two decades have centered on low-density agrarian urbanism and forest gardens. Using settlement studies, lidar data, and hydrological analysis, this article discusses the applicability of these models for the ancient Maya at Lamanai and Ka’kabish, and more generally, Northern Belize. The Maya in the periphery at Lamanai developed wetland management strategies by capitalizing on natural drainage next to seasonally inundated swamps, or bajos. Evidence suggests that the Maya sustained large populations by using channels at the edge of bajos for field systems. These systems may be key to understanding their sustainability in the past.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the transition to food-producing economies in the Western Valleys of northern Chile led to a decline in foraging in highland areas around AD 650, yet colonial records from the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries attest to the continued existence of foraging groups. Taking the Camarones River Basin as a test case, this study identifies small-scale settlements and hunting installations in upland areas using remote-sensing data. In considering these new data alongside ethnohistorical accounts, the author proposes that foraging endured into the late colonial era, possibly coexisting with herder and agropastoral communities and precipitating tethered settlement patterns.

A 103 km2 aerial lidar survey of Dzibanche/Kaanu’l, Mexico, reveals the city’s settlement to be more populous and well-organized than previously thought. The sprawling settlement incorporated the early center of Ichkabal in a network of smaller peri-urban civic-ceremonial nodes. The density and complexity of the Kaanu’l settlement is consistent with its extraordinary political reach as a multiregional hegemonic state. The city and settlement grew to their maximum extent during the Early Classic period until AD 630. The lidar-derived data show that Dzibanche may have had the largest monumental zone and highest population density in the Maya Lowlands at that time. The Early Classic layout was unaltered by later construction, allowing us to document a well-developed system of causeways connecting an urban center and peripheral plaza groups with surrounding settlements and agricultural fields. The spatial organization and interconnectedness of this Early Classic settlement suggests a greater level of urban planning for optimal flow of goods and people across urban and peri-urban zones than previously thought.

This project employs a geoarchaeological approach to explore human occupation of the highland wetlands (bofedales) and salt flats of the Dry Puna of northern Chile (>2500m above sea level) during the Holocene. Differences in the archaeological record of each ecosystem are tentatively suggested to relate to settlement patterns and the history of the landscape.

As airborne lidar surveys reveal a growing sample of urbanised tropical landscapes, questions linger about the sampling bias of such research leading to inflated estimates of urban extent and population magnitude. ‘Found’ datasets from remote sensing conducted for non-archaeological purposes and thus not subject to archaeological site bias, provide an opportunity to address these concerns through pseudorandom sampling. Here, the authors present their analysis of an environmental lidar dataset from Campeche, Mexico, which reveals previously unrecorded urbanism and dense regional-scale settlement. Both characteristics, the authors argue, are therefore demonstrably ubiquitous across the central Maya Lowlands.

Fog oases (lomas) present pockets of verdant vegetation within the arid coastal desert of Andean South America and archaeological excavation within some of the oases has revealed a long history of human exploitation of these landscapes. Yet lomas settlements are under-represented in archaeological datasets due to their tendency to be located in remote inter-valley areas. Here, the authors employ satellite imagery survey to map the locations of anthropogenic surface features along the central Peruvian coast. They observe two categories of archaeological features, large corrals and clustered structures, and document a concentration of settlement features within lomas landscapes that suggests a pre-Hispanic preference for both short- and long-term occupation of these verdant oases.

Palaeoenvironmental data indicate that the climate of south-western Madagascar has changed repeatedly over the past millennium. Combined with socio-political challenges such as warfare and slave raiding, communities continually had to mitigate against risk. Here, the authors apply social network analysis to pottery assemblages from sites on the Velondriake coast to identify intercommunity connectivity and changes over time. The results indicate both continuity of densely connected networks and change in their spatial extent and structure. These network shifts coincided with periods of socio-political and environmental perturbation attested in palaeoclimate data and oral histories. Communities responded to socio-political and environmental risk by reconfiguring social connections and migrating to areas of greater resource availability or political security.

Northern Britain is one of a few areas in Western Europe over which the Roman Empire did not establish full control. In order to reassess the impact of Rome in this northernmost frontier, the new Leverhulme-funded project Beyond Walls is analysing the long-term transformation of settlement patterns in an area extending from south of Hadrian's Wall to north of the Antonine Wall. The results of a pilot study around Burnswark hillfort demonstrate the potential of such a landscape-based approach.