This article highlights how Gordon Willey's study of prehistoric settlement patterns in the Veru Valley marked a groundbreaking shift in mid-20 century archaeology away from mere chronological description toward exploring how ancient societies functioned and changed over time. By tracing distributions of dwellings, ceremonial buildings, fortified sites, and cemeteries across different periods, Willey illuminated social organization and subsistence strategies and the cultural change over time. His approach—analyzing four types of sites within a single valley—created a framework for interpreting large-scale dynamic such as population growth, conflict, and shift in political or religious center. Settlement archaeology thus emerged as a crucial method for understanding cultural evolution: it allowed archaeologists to see "people behind objects" by examining how communities adapted to their environments and how internal factors, rather than just external diffusion, shaped cultural change. The paper clarified some critics made by some Chinese scholars caused by their misunderstanding of the term “settlement” (usually “village” in Chinese meaning) and maintains that Willey’s study remains a methodologica milestone that laid the foundation for more complex explorations of social, economic, and political structures. By moving beyond culture-historical concerns, Willey’s work demonstrated how archaeology could address broader anthropological questions about human organization and social change through systematic analysis of settlement patterns and site functions.