Comparing ancient landscapes and communities

A recent article on the National Geographic News page discusses the research done by Robert Drennon and Christian Peterson from the University of Pittsburgh comparing 3 ancient chiefdoms in a number of ways, including mapping the housing patterns and other aspects of the landscape. Their results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed a great deal of diversity between the communities located in the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico, Alto Magdalena in the Andes, and Hongshan in China. The authors noted they hoped more datasets can be collected from the sites of ancient communities around the world.