Culture and Environment Interactions: A Geographical Perspective and Archaeological Analysis on the Settlement Pattern of the Chalcolithic Period of the Central Zagros

The Gamasb River Basin survey project carried out from 2004 to 2006 in the Central Zagros West of Iran was aimed at obtaining a reliable overview of the occurrence of Chalcolithic sites across the area. This paper explores environmental archaeological approaches to regional scale research in dynamic landscapes. This approach explicitly links archaeological studies of landscape with various land use patterns that may have affected archaeological material structures. An important aspect of any approach to natural and archaeological resource problems lies with the ability to represent spatially those resources and elements of the environment. The adoption of a spatial framework for landscape study provides a mechanism for the spatial conceptualization of solutions to those problems. A basic rationale for taking a spatial perspective to management strategies can be readily derived from the overall function of planning, namely Geographic Information Systems (GIS) which provide a suitable inference for such a spatial approach and one which establishes the necessary analytical and decision support tools. The main goals of present paper are as follow: (1)- This paper attempts to make a contribution toward application of the above concepts archaeological material distributions on the cultural landscape; (2)- examines the role and functionality of GIS as an appropriate tool for spatial analyses of archaeological materials and an appropriate decision-support tool that conceptualizes solutions for the environmental and cultural interactions; (3)- discusses the potential of assessment method through the use of statistics based on findings from a case study in Iran. Results have increased our understanding of archaeological site location in Iran and the close links between landscape ecology and archaeology.