A settlement is a general term used in archeology, landscape history and other subjects for a permanent or temporary community in which people live, without being specific as to size, population or importance. A settlement can therefore range in size from a small number of dwellings grouped together to the largest of cities with surrounding urbanized areas. The term may include hamlets, villages, towns and cities. A UK schools curriculum requires 12-year-old pupils to understand and define the term.[1]
A settlement conventionally includes its constructed facilities such as roads, enclosures, field systems, boundary banks and ditches, ponds, parks and woods, mills, manor houses, moats and churches.[2]
Settlements can be ordered by size or other factors to define a settlement hierarchy.
Landscape history studies the form (morphology) of settlements – for example whether they are dispersed or nucleated.
Notes
See also
- Category:Settlements
- Colonization
- Developed Environments
- Israeli settlement
- List of uninhabited regions
- Resettlement
- Transmigration program
- Urban morphology
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en:Human settlement
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