Natural and social patterns in the distribution of Bronze Age Nuragic sites (Sardinia, Italy): using the Widom-Rowlinson penetrable sphere model to understand past human occupation

When looking into land use and human agency in the modification of the landscape, the concepts of socio-economic opportunities vs. natural constraints is one of the key issues. In comparison with the modern world, past human communities relied much more upon local resources and a tight societal structure to better adapt to the conditions and changes in the surrounding environment. Therefore, in the study of prehistorical cultures land use is both a strong source of information about sustenance strategies and community behaviours and a subject potentially easier to model within a set of natural and social parameters. To this purpose, we investigated the settlement distribution patterns of Bronze Age structures of the Nuragic culture on the island of Sardinia (Italy) using spatial point pattern analysis. We investigated different covariates divided into natural (topography, water and geological resources) and cultural (type of structure, settlement hierarchy), alone and in combination, and looked at how each could explain the distribution of Nuragic sites.

Several covariates from both natural and cultural groups show significant values, with the best representing models of pattern distribution coming from the combination of covariates from both groups. Aside from topographic parameters, distance from known ore deposits seems to have an impact on structure density. Among cultural covariates, there is a clear association between simple and complex megalithic structures (nuraghes). This pattern suggests the collation of smaller structures around larger settlements, either by the former emerging from the presence of the latter or vice versa. These findings offer new insight on the development and ways of life of the Nuragic society in their geographical context, and highlight how the relationship between the physical and the social aspects of human-landscape interactions is fundamentally interdependent. This approach could also represent a potential tool to compare to other Bronze Age and prehistorical communities.