Human Settlements
Types of rural settlement
Match each settlement type to its regions.
What shapes a village? Physical factors (terrain, altitude, climate, water), cultural and ethnic factors (caste, community), and security (defence against raids or wild animals).
There are four main types of rural settlement:
- Clustered (compact): houses packed closely together. Found in fertile plains and the north-east; in Bundelkhand for defence; and in Rajasthan, where people gather around scarce water.
- Semi-clustered: a dominant group lives at the centre, and the lower or poorer groups on the edges. Common in the Gujarat plain and parts of Rajasthan.
- Hamleted: the village is split into separate units, often for social reasons, with local names like panna, para, palli, nagla and dhani. Found in the middle and lower Ganga plain and Chhattisgarh.
- Dispersed: isolated huts scattered across jungles and hills, as in Meghalaya, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala.
Land, people and safety together shape the village.
Land, people and safety shape villages.
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