Compare methods

	Point Pattern Settlement Analysis	Site Catchment Analysis
Field	Archaeology	Archaeology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1976	1970
Originator	Ian Hodder & Clive Orton (introducing geographical point-pattern methods to archaeology)	Claudio Vita-Finzi & Eric S. Higgs
Type	Spatial-statistical pipeline testing settlement distributions against complete spatial randomness	Spatial economic pipeline delimiting and characterizing a site's exploitation territory
Seminal source	Hodder, I., & Orton, C. (1976). Spatial Analysis in Archaeology. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9780521210805	Vita-Finzi, C., & Higgs, E. S. (1970). Prehistoric Economy in the Mount Carmel Area of Palestine: Site Catchment Analysis. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 36, 1-37.
Aliases	Settlement Pattern Analysis, Nearest-Neighbour Settlement Analysis, Spatial Point Pattern Analysis, Site Distribution Analysis	Catchment Analysis, Site Exploitation Territory Analysis, Economic Catchment Modeling, Resource Catchment Analysis
Related	2	2
Summary	Point pattern settlement analysis treats archaeological sites as points in space and uses spatial statistics to test whether their distribution is clustered, dispersed, or random. The motivating question is interpretive: clustering may signal social aggregation, defense, or attraction to localized resources, while regular spacing may reflect competition for territory or central-place organization. Ian Hodder and Clive Orton's 1976 Spatial Analysis in Archaeology imported nearest-neighbour statistics, quadrat methods, and related techniques from quantitative geography, giving archaeologists tools to compare observed site spacing against the expectation under complete spatial randomness. Conolly and Lake extend this into the GIS era with second-order methods such as Ripley's K and simulation-based significance testing, making point pattern analysis a standard part of settlement studies.	Site catchment analysis models a settlement's economy by delimiting the territory that its inhabitants could realistically exploit and inventorying the resources within it. Introduced by Claudio Vita-Finzi and Eric Higgs in their 1970 study of the Mount Carmel area, the method rests on the premise that the cost of moving to and from a site falls off sharply with distance, so most subsistence activity occurs within a limited radius. By drawing a catchment — classically the area within one or two hours' walk — and measuring how much of it is arable land, grazing, water, lithic sources, or wild biota, the analyst characterizes whether a site is oriented toward farming, herding, hunting, or gathering. Modern practice replaces simple circles with terrain-sensitive least-cost territories computed in a Geographical Information System, as set out by Conolly and Lake.