Paul,

I respectfully disagree in some ways to your characterisation. I actually don't care whether the modelling approach is "cutting edge" it is however, to me a useful tool for looking at patterns and considering how a landscape might be used. 

I mentioned Chisholm on purpose when I could have mentioned Peter Hagget et al, because Chisholm wasn't so much of a modeller and avoided much of the high end mathematic and geometric modelling that was pretty much of a sound and light show. The basic reason for these models was to try and explain uneven development and land use patterns. I am well aware that the locational geography school and their technique of modelling was uncritically and breathlessly taken up by (St) David Clarke and Lord Renfrew. Site location though, drew on Chisholm's interpretation of von Thunen and other classic geographers rather than directly on Hagget. I rather though it gradually died as its exponents retired. 

I don't think that all that many archaeologists converted to Braudel (at least not as many as converted to Foucault or Derrida) and of those most seemed to realise that there wasn't really an Annales School to adopt. For me at least the breadth of Braudel's writing wasn't a surprise but the richness and depth of the writings of authors like Le Roy Ladurie showed what historians could achieve in helping us understand the past. 

The notion of different types of historical processes as discussed by Braudel is also quite important as a technique for trying to meld historical and environmental data and probably deserves more thought than it has been given by archaeologists.  

I actually once tried a site catchment analysis and I must admit it was a bugger to do properly, GIS with its ability to do distance decay models would make it much easier. I had to fudge it and was less than happy with the results. More recently though, I have found in documentary accounts of rural life considerable evidence of movement patterns and travelling time from which you can almost construct a geography of a place or person at a set period of time in the past. This then helps develop an understanding of a landscape or seascape and how people lived in it. This has all helped me understand why some sites are created where they were, why some land was occupied first and other blocks left vacant and why things changed.    

Another book that might have some relevant information in it is Mather, A.S. 1986 Land use which again is a summary text that leads into the literature.

Iain Stuart

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