Abstract: As the environmental crisis and energy issues are becoming increasingly prominent and living cultures are constantly convergent, study of construction modes of the traditional villages’ human settlements is important for optimizing rural human settlement and deepening the construction of socialist new countryside. By taking Southern Hunan as geography unit, the location strategies and construction modes of the local traditional villages’human settlements were studied, which were based on the analysis of the natural geographical conditions and historical and cultural environments. Taking defense, agricultural production, economic construction and concepts of Fengshui into consideration, traditional villages in southern Hunan usually were located at sloping fields or platforms of hills where the geographical environment was relatively independent or closed. The construction modes of traditional villages’ human settlements in Southern Hunan included pursuing the philosophy of “harmony between man and nature”, abiding by the traditional etiquette, autonomous, coadjutant, economical and practical principles, reflecting the law of location selection when those villages were developing.

Key words: traditional villages, human settlements, location, construction, Southern Hunan