A Preliminary Study on Mapping Methods of Geographical Features of Archaeological Remains and Ancient Human Behaviors in Prehistoric Settlement Landscape Reconstruction

The reconstruction of ancient geographical scenarios is significant for understanding environmental changes and civilizational evolution. However, human activities, as the main subjects in these scenes, cannot be directly reconstructed due to the lack of written records. Archaeological sites, formed through long-term human activities and natural processes, preserve material traces of ancient human behaviors within specific spatiotemporal contexts and provide critical evidence for inferring behaviors lacking written records. However, behavioral processes within site scenarios are difficult to observe and express directly. To address this challenge, we proposed a behavioral inference mapping method based on archaeological remains, integrating geography, archaeology, and behavioral science to support the inference and structured expression of ancient human behaviors. We first analyzed the relationships between behaviors and remain elements, and developed principles for inferring ancient human behaviors from remains. Secondly, combined with spatial analysis of geographic entities, we proposed multiscale geometric representations, methods for extracting and analyzing the geographical features of remains. We constructed a rule-driven mapping method of geographical features of archaeological remains and ancient human behaviors. Finally, the Taixi Site in Hebei Province and the Lingjiatan Site in Anhui Province were used as examples to verify the applicability and effectiveness of this method. This approach bridges remains and ancient human behaviors, demonstrates strong adaptability for behavioral-process inference, and provides new perspectives for settlement landscape reconstruction.