Evaluation of the location of the geographical bases on the settlements of the Sassanid period in the highlands of southwestern Iran, A case study: Plain of Arsanjān, Fārs province.

Ancient sites represent the cultural landscape resulting from the interaction between humans and the environment. They are influenced by a set of geographical, natural and socio-cultural factors. In other words, ancient settlements as spatial relics of early human activities conveys information about the initial adaptation of humans and the transformation of the environment. The interpretation and disclosure of environmental information of settlement distribution can provide conditions for a better understanding of the interaction between human and the environment in this era. In this interaction, environmental factors such as height above sea level, slope, water resources, vegetation, degree of slope and land use, are in a way the geographical and natural substrates play an effective role in the distribution of ancient sites. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the geographical foundations of the ancient settlements of the Sassanid period in the highland of Arsanjan. Based on this, six geographical factors were considered as environmental factors or independent variables and the area of ancient sites as dependent variables. To investigate these factors, Arc Gis and SPSS software and quantitative analysis methods of inferential statistics with the Pearson correlation method were used. In addition, multiple linear regression analysis was used to investigate the effect of several independent variables on the dependent variable. The results of these analysis determined that Sassanid period sites with a number of natural factors such as moderate to weak dependencies and a number of environmental factors also show a high dependency. It should be noted that the intensity of influence of geographical factors related to the Sassanid period sites of Arsanjān plain using multiple linear regression analysis is equal to 0.629. This number expresses the relatively high and positive correlation between some geographical and environmental factors and the Sassanid era sites of Arsanjān. In the analysis and evaluation of the settlement patterns of Sassanid sites using cluster analysis, four patterns were obtained, and in addition to a large site in the region along with its smaller satellite sites, which are large and small villages with farming and animal husbandry methods, there is another pattern as well. It was found that it is probably related to their function and location in the landscape of the region. These types of sites are reminiscent of military forts or roadside outposts due to their location on steep hills, rocky beds, and almost elevated areas.