Geostatistical and geoarchaeological study of Holocene floodplains and site distributions on the Sha‐Ying River Basin, Central China

Geostatistics has become a powerful method for investigating complex spatial variations of prehistoric settlements in floodplains and other geomorphological settings. A geoarchaeological drilling program that covers most the Sha-Ying River Basin provides rare opportunity with unusually detailed environmental data to contest develop geostatistics method, which proves be essential, combination archaeological data, understand long-term (9000–2500 B.P.) patterns human inhabitation adaption volatile floodplain environments eastern Central China. We analysed variography multivariate ordination borehole explored complexities landform evolution, reference sedimentation processes soil development River. The recurrent impact river floods on regional landforms is manifested by spatial-autocorrelated properties over distances up 10 km, sometimes directional trends. then developed model evolution through kriging compared reconstruction settlement patterns. Our results illustrate socio-environmental dynamics communities first populated adapted diverse ways changing from early middle Holocene. This improved will have far-reaching implications future studies similar settings across vast China global regions.