| Archaeology Dictionary: site catchment analysis |
[Te]
A systematic study of an arbitrarily defined area around a series of known sites so that the main features of such areas can be compared to check for patterning or regularity. Developed by Eric Higgs and Claudio Vita-Finzi during the late 1960s, the purpose of site catchment analysis was to reconstruct something of the economy of archaeological sites. The size of the areas of search may be based on the sources of material found at the site or on notional working areas such as the distance that could be travelled out from the focus during the course of a day's journey.
