hamlet

…town but bigger than a hamlet (a very small settlement lacking many of its own institutions). A village is primarily categorized according to its population size and location, usually a small community in a rural area. The term largely refers to permanent settlements, with at least some of the population…

…lives in nucleated villages or hamlets (i.e., in compact groups of dwellings). Sometimes, as is generally the case in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the houses are placed in a ring with windowless outer walls, so that each complex resembles a protected fortress with a few guarded entrances. Dispersed habitation patterns in the…

…Polynesia prior to European contact: hamlets and villages. Their origin and development reflected factors such as social organization, the distribution of food-crop resources, and defense considerations.

In Wales hamlets began to disappear in the late Middle Ages through the related processes of consolidation and enclosure that accompanied the decline in the size of the bond (feudally tied) population. The Black Death of 1349, which spread quickly among poorer inhabitants, reinforced this trend. Many…