• Burial Mounds
• Hillforts
• North-Eastern Adriatic
• Soilscape
• Spatial analysis

The Vrsar/Orsera territory belongs to the southern and south-western karst plateau of Istria (Croatia). This region of the Istrian peninsula is traditionally called Red Istria, from the bright red Terra Rossa soils that cover the Mesozoic limestone formations. The landscape of Vrsar/Orsera displays typical karst landforms, such as doline fields and residual hills. On the hilltops stand structures belonging to Bronze and Iron Age settlement: hillforts (gradine/castellieri) and stone burial mounds or tumuli. The goal of this work is to investigate the relationships between the Bronze and Iron Age settlement patterns and the soilscape in the Vrsar/Orsera territory. The analysis was carried out through a fieldwork component, in which 95 cores of Vrsar/Orsera soils were collected and correlated with existing soil data from the region, and an analysis component using GIS software. The results show that the prehistoric settlement follows a systematic pattern built taking into account the soilscape and visibility factors.