Some recent archaeological landscape projects in Czechoslovakia have found a theoretical background within the concept of ’community areas‘. According to this concept prehistoric populations are approached as divided into communities. Each community is supposed to have shared a common territory within which most of its activities were concentrated. The community area consisted of several sub-areas (e.g. habitation areas, specific production areas, funerary areas, etc.) where activities different in function were performed (Neustupny 1986; 1991). The theory of community areas is not, however, limited to the identification of community areas themselves. It is rather a general approach, based on presumption and identification of patterns or structures underlying the archaeological record and reflecting structured human behaviour in the past. Using some concepts of the community area theory, this paper aims at analysing prehistoric habitation areas in the territory of Bohemia and articulating some general hypotheses concerning settlement processes and structures on various levels of complexity.