Spatiotemporal characteristics of the ancient water wells for the past 3,000a in Zhejiang Province, China: a perspective of geography

ABSTRACT Water wells are very important in the history of human development. The identification of spatiotemporal patterns of ancient water wells is a key to understanding the relationship between ancients and water, the evolution of ancient settlement patterns, and the history of population migration. However, at present, there are few reports to quantitatively explore the spatiotemporal evolution of ancient water wells from the perspective of geography. There is still a knowledge gap. Therefore, we show that a spatiotemporal kernel density estimation (STKDE) model and the centre-of-gravity method are useful for studying the spatiotemporal evolution of ancient water wells over the past 3,000 years in Zhejiang Province of southern China. The results show that in the past 3,000 years, the ancient water wells there have experienced an evolution from ‘single-core’ to ‘multicore’ aggregation, and the scope has gradually shifted from northern Zhejiang to southern Zhejiang. In addition, Hangzhou, Shangyu and ChunAn have always been aggregation centres. Socioeconomic factors, political and social stability, natural environmental conditions, population density and technological progress are the most important variables associated with water well ‘hot spots’ in time and space. This article provides a new perspective for the study of ancient water wells and fills the knowledge gap in understanding the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of ancient water wells and other point or line features in the archaeological record.