Thanks a ton to all who responded to my query on quality
historical/documentary approaches to settlement pattern research.  The
following is an excerpted and fragmentary bibliography which presents the
references as they were recommended to me.  It may be useful for keyword
searches, or whatever.  I have also tried to give credit to those who made
the recommendations by mentioning their contributions.
 
William Adams'  work at Silcott, Washington was suggested by Sean Hess.
 
Archaeology of the Roman Economy (Univ Calif Press 1986) by Kevin T. Greene
was recommended by K. T. Greene.
 
Robin Mills added Kenneth Lewis' Frontier Settlement Pattern Book, 1984.
 
Bill Green suggested David H. Thomas' stuff from St. Catherine's Island
in Georgia.  As did Matthew Hill and Karl Steinen.
Steinen also added Gerald Milanich's works (de Soto project,  etc), Ken
Johnson's Northern Floridian work, and materials form the Columbian
Consequences series.
 
And Hill also suggested Robert McC Adams' _Land behind Baghdad_.
 
Mikhail Petrov chimed in with:
Aetolia and the Aetolians: towrds the interdisciplinary study of a Greek
region. Utrecht 1987
and
"an article of Peter Doorn in 'Halbgraue Reihe zur Historichen
Fachinformatik'-series which is published by Max-Plank Institut fur
Geschichte in Goettingen, Germany. The volume with this article was
published probably in 1993"
 
Other interesting ideas came from Chris Berry:
Lipe, W. D., Editor
1992    _The Sand Canyon Archaeological Project: A progress report._
        Occaisional Paper 2. Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez, CO
and
"Soil, Water, Biology and Belief", edited by Toll, published by New Mexico
Arch. Council (P.O. Box 1023, Albequerque (sic), NM, 87103, $22 +3 S&H).
 
Last but by no means least, Matthew Johnson added the remainder:
 
Roberts, BK.  The Making of the English Village.
 
the journals Landscape History and Journal of the Medieval Settlement
Research Group
 
Hoskins, WG.  Fieldwork in Local History.
 
Aston, M. Interpreting the Landscape.
 
Papers by M. Johnson in _An Archaeology of Capitalism_
(Blackwells).
 
____________
Matt Tomaso
Anthropology
U. Texas Austin
 
It is a sick and beautiful world.