Reconstructing long-term settlement histories on complex alluvial floodplains by integrating historical map analysis and remote-sensing: an archaeological analysis of the landscape of the Indus River Basin

Heritage Science

Table 3 Present-day context of the mounds identified in the SoI historical maps

Mound-features	Total	Mounds	Modern buildings	Modern buildings and mounds	Agricultural fields
Identified in PAS	123	23% (n29)	26% (n33)	42% (n52)	7% (n9)
Random sample > 2 ha	100	10%	30%	41%	19%
Random sample < 2 ha	100	5%	42%	11%	42%

We have examined all mounds that could be related to sites reported in the PAS (see Table 2). From the rest, a random sample query has been applied to select 100 features across the AOI. A second random sample query has been done on the smaller “mound features”, which provide interesting results to understand the specific problems of the small features represented in the SoI historical maps: in that case almost 90% are “not visible” Today, which confirms the low probability to be mounds, specially in the present landscape, but maybe also in the past. However, as happened in Haryana, still a small proportion correspond to mounds (16% here). That evidences that is a dataset not to be entirely dismissed, specially when working at micro-regional level