This volume examines the relationships between rural settlement processes and the spatial patterns they produce by mapping past and present patterns and tracing the historical processes which generated them. Using the historical records of Palestine (Eretz Israel), David Grossman reviews the settlement processes of bedouins (sedentarization and nomadization), Arab peasants (settlement fixation, migration, and frontier expansion of fallahin), and early Jewish settlers. Past records are traced back to the biblical period, and a survey of the literature dealing with British evidence of rural processes and settlement in medieval times is presented for comparison--sharpening Grossman's particular approach to the subject.

The introduction provides a review of the literature and a discussion of the various approaches to the interpretation of rural spatial processes. It evaluates theoretical models and concludes with a simple model functioning as a hypothetical basis for the rest of the book. The following two chapters are devoted to the British colonization process, which, unlike the Palestinian one, can be traced in a fairly uninterrupted manner to its Anglo-Saxon roots. Next are chapters detailing the settlement processes and process patterns in Palestine, concluding with a reexamination of theoretical models in light of empirical evidence. Rural Process-Pattern Relationships considers subjects central to both historical geography and rural geography, representing a unique approach of interest to a wide range of scholars.