Natural Movements in Prehistoric Villages?

Hillier and other researchers combined analysis of urban grids using axial maps with counts of pedestrian movements. They recognised the influence these grids played on pedestrian movements in cities and developed the ‘law of natural movement’ in which urban grids are principal generators of pedestrian movement and starting point for a city’s development into specialised ‘generative’ and ‘conservative’ zones. In archaeology, tree ring dating has allowed to analyse growth processes of prehistoric villages. This paper looks at some of these settlements in the Circum-Alpine region using axial maps. It analyses how new buildings fitted into emerging street patterns. Contrary to modern economies, it remains extremely difficult to determine in prehistoric settlements what could be considered equivalent to modern ‘movement-rich land uses’ to further explore the ‘law of natural movement’. However, there are signs of changing and increasingly specialised economies in the second half of the 4th millennium BC. Also within certain settlements, there are occasions in which ‘not normal buildings’ were added respectively different settlement sections used for specific purposes. The paper cannot provide new inputs into the ‘law of natural movement’ as such but gives ‘spatial-based’ arguments to the discussion of social changes during the transition from Neolithic to Early Bronze Age.