Forms of settlement inequality over space. A GIS-based method for measuring differences among settlements

Architecture has always been a privileged arena for the negotiation and contestation of social and political positions, identities and hegemony. The mechanisms through which architecture is used within those contexts are an essential part of the political economy of a group or a larger organization. However, such mechanisms are often resistant to quantitative approaches. In this paper, we present a case study that assesses, in a quantitative and systematic way, the different forms that such mechanisms could have adopted across a large area. The case study deals with Iron Age settlements in the NW Iberian Peninsula where, towards the end of the Iron Age, different “economies of power” existed, implying different forms of social complexity and different uses of the material culture and architecture to create and express them. We describe a method to measure the relative importance of two alternate forms of building and expressing settlement inequality: one based on population size and one based on the display of elaborated complexes of defensive earthworks. By quantifying and comparing three variables (extension of settlement areas, % of total area occupied by defensive earthworks and effort invested in their construction) we obtained some basic statistical indicators that suggest a systematic pattern for our study area: size-based differences in some sectors, and differences expressed mostly through the construction of defensive complexes of varied monumentality in others.

Settlement analysis. Settlement inequality. Defensive architecture. Spatial analysis. GIS. Iron Age. NW Iberian Peninsula.