Abstract:
Studies on Chinese traditional settlements and vernacular dwellings have moved on to cultural division. The division of the whole country area and typical culture circle has become maturely, but it needs to be studied deeply on subdivision of marginal cultural circle and cultural blending area. In this paper, based on a survey of traditional settlements and vernacular dwellings in Hainan Island, cultural factors are selected from four levels: natural environment, settlements spatial form, vernacular dwellings type and social culture, in order to construct the cultural factors index system and cultural geographic information database of cultural landscape division of the traditional settlements and vernacular dwellings in Hainan Island. Through the quantitative analysis of the data-type factors of the study samples, it is determined that settlement morphology and layout of vernacular dwelling are the dominant factors. Then the study samples are systematically clustered by these two dominant factors. Combining the systematic clustering results of the data-type factors with perceptual impression of the descriptive factors, it is divided into two cultural regions and ten cultural sub-regions of traditional settlements and vernacular dwellings in Hainan. This method combines traditionally qualitative analysis with quantitative systematically cluster and tries to make the results more objective and accurate, which is a new attempt and exploration of the cultural division of traditional settlements and vernacular dwellings.