Interaction Between Environment and Culture: Geographical Landscape and Archaeological Analysis of Bronze Age Settlements of Horand County

Horand County is located in the most eastern part of Eastern Azerbaijan Province and is perhaps one of the few areas of Iran where major archaeological activities have not yet been carried out. Environmental factors play an important role in creating human settlements in any period. So in archaeology, in addition to the effects of the environment on the creation of each settlement, the degree of the adaptation of settlements to environmental conditions should be examined. One of the methods of studying the adaptation of settlements to environmental conditions is to analyze settlement patterns, that is to examine the formation of ancient sites in environmental contexts. Considering the geographical location and environmental potentials of a region, it is important to know which environmental factors have contributed to the creation, continuity, or abandonment of the grounds and how humans have dealt with their environment in choosing a lifestyle. For this purpose, 42 sites of Horand County, which have traces of the Bronze Age, are studied with the aim of determining the settlement patterns based on environmental variables. Through cluster analysis and using SPSS and ArcGIS software, the distribution of ancient sites in relation to natural variables is investigated. The location pattern of the sites in relation to the environmental resources shows that the settlement pattern of the Bronze Age at Horand is similar to the current settlement pattern and that, under the effect of the environmental conditions, two settlement patterns of sedentary farmers and nomadic herders in the region have always been observed.