Estimating “Land Use Heritage” to Model Changes in Archaeological Settlement Patterns

This paper describes a method to calculate a “land use heritage map” based on the concept of “memory of landscape”. Such a map can be seen as one variable among many others that can influence site location preference and can be used as input for archaeological predictive models. The computed values equate to an index of long-term land use intensity. This index aims to assess the influence of previous occupation of the landscape on settlement location, in particular Roman rural settlements. The method was applied on a micro-region located in Southern France in order to test its workability. It is concluded that the method is potentially suitable for incorporating the influence of previous occupation in predictive modelling but still needs further refinement in order to be more generally applicable.