Wales lies at the western edge of Great Britain. Geographically, it is a mountainous block of land, surrounded by sea on three sides and, in the East, by the broad vales of the rivers Severn and Dee. Both rivers form a sharp geographical boundary that is plainly visible when travelling from Gloucester via Shrewsbury to Flint. Hills and mountains rise abruptly in an impressive façade on the western side of both valleys to the arching back of the upland mass that forms Wales, a distinct topographical entity of ca.20,520 sq.km.
Its characteristic geography has always given Wales a certain degree of isolation. This would explain why, originally, its landmass was not colonised from the lowlands to the East, but from the seaward shorelines. For several millennia this situation prevailed and in some respect has survived even to this day, for example when it comes to a modern infrastructure. It was not entirely due to their desire to keep the inhabitants of Wales out of their 'back yards', that the Anglo-Normans and the Anglo-Saxons of the Middle Ages built the great earthen barrier of Offa's Dyke along the line of the two Rivers. The brooding hills in the West were threatening in themselves. The dissected nature of the land, i.e. its long ridges, blocks of mountains and plateaux, divided by deep, seemingly endless valleys are prominent features to this day and proved problematic even to the masterly road builders of the Roman Army when they entered Wales after A.D.75.
Like most of Great Britain, Wales possesses a large number of ancient field monuments, which date back to the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, i.e. roughly between 3500 and 1600 BC. Wales, as a distinct topographical entity, seemed ideal for investigating the relationship between field monuments of these periods and their topographical distribution in one of Britain's Highland Zones. In order to do this, the topographical features associated with the field monuments were identified, named and illustrated as three-dimensional block diagrams. 53 topographical features were recorded, ranging from major summits to the lowest valley floors. These were then arranged in seven groups, each representing a particular range of relief and the view potential it has. It had become customary to assume that barrows and cairns especially were placed on the edge of ridges and summits, so that they could be seen from below. This idea then lead to all kinds of speculations, mostly of a cultural nature. The block diagrams made it possible to look at monument distribution statistically, and it emerged that there was no meaningful concentration of monuments in sight specific positions. Monuments occured in all types of location. It also emerged that the false impression was caused by the blocky nature of the Welsh terrain.
Beside the topographical considerations, environmental aspects (i.e. soils, vegetation, climate), archaeological aspects (i.e. types of monument and archaeological material) and territorial groupings were investigated and studied. The latter aspect was then tested by means of an isopleth map and group-size adjusted polygon arrangements in order to illustrate the cultural expansion that had been noticed in the Welsh Highland Zone. In statistical terms, the trend of expansion was not so much a matter of movement from the coastal lowlands to the central uplands, in term of relocation diffusion, but a matter of expansion diffusion inland, i.e. an increasing density of overall population, the parcelling-off of land and the consolidation of communities and dispersal of traditions amongst the inhabitants.
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