Percolation robustness and the deep history of regionality
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2020-09-15

It has long been argued that the different settlement patterns in Britain reflect topographical variability,  for  example  Fox's  lowland  and  upland  zones,  the  "Central  Province",  etc.  A  key  question is whether topographic barriers and corridors have substantially influenced patterns of connectivity that in turn underwrite a deep history of British settlement pattern. Recently archaeologists and others have turned to computational Percolation Analysis to address this question (e.g. Arcaute et al, in prep, "Case studies in percolation analysis: the distribution of English settlement in the 11th and 19th centuries compared", J. Arch, Sci.; Maddison, 2018,” Using Percolation Analysis for investigating the distribution of Hillforts in Britain and Ireland”, CAA 2018, Tübingen). There has been little attempt to establish the robustness of clusters/net-works produced by percolation in the face of, for example, locational uncertainty. Also, the role of individual sites within a cluster has not been addressed; can a distinction be drawn between ‘core’ sites, and are some peripheral sites important in providing connectivity between clusters? This paper will describe a new method of percolation analysis which attempts to address these issues, and demonstrate its application to the classic problem of the existence and bounds of a "central province" in British settlement (Roberts and Wrathmell, 2000, An Atlas of Rural Set-tlement in England), as well as the roles and importance of specific hillforts in Britain (Lock and Ralston, 2012, An Atlas of Hillforts in Britain and Ireland).


Michael Simon Maddison, Mark Lake