Modelling Regional Landscape Through the Predictive and Postdictive Exploration of Settlement Choices: a Theoretical Framework

The paper illustrates the theoretical approaches to the regional landscape, which can interact, aiming at the modelling and exploration of past landscape dynamics, in particular the settlement chamber model, the community area theory, and further implications, as well as the taskscape approach. The main goal is to set up a meaningful framework for both predictive modelling and postdictive analysis of the available datasets, aiming at the long-term investigation of location choices and physical and cultural characteristics of landscape zones and settlement chambers. The settlement dynamic approach applied for the definition of settlement chambers over the ancient Greek Boeotian landscape will be used for illustration purposes. It allows the detection of different areas with settlement potential in the long term, mainly by analysing the presence and location of known settlements in different periods.