Critique of Settlement Pattern Analysis in Iranian Archaeological Texts

The settlement Archeology is a common method of analysis that uses scientific methods to study three important components, including individual structures, social settlement, and regional settlement. This method analyzes the relationship between environmental variables and livelihoods and social settlement, reconstructs the socio-economic organizations of past societies, and determines the size, function, distance, and relationship of settlements. The present study has succeeded in identifying more than 80 texts in the form of dissertations, thesis, and scientific-research and extension scientific articles that have directly and indirectly addressed this issue. Less attention to the basic issues and methods of the settlement archeology, and no use of paleontological research to identify environmental variables in the context of the ancient landscape, are the most important methodological and conceptual problems of the texts. To these problems must be added the poor utilization of scientific tools and methods such as Satellite and Aerial Photography, Archaeogeophysics, Virtual Reality, Geographic Information System (GIS) and Statistical Methods. Providing desirable research credits and playing the role of related institutes and universities are among the most important strategies for the correct and scientific implementation of this method.