The rural skeletal texture in Gilan province like the other regions is influenced by the various natural, climatic, economic and social/cultural factors. It is clear that these factors impact on each other too. But this paper topic is the impact of the social/cultural factors on the skeletal characteristics of biological and rural systems. This paper is seeking to find an answer to the social/cultural factors influencing the texture of Gilan villages and the characteristics of the impact on its skeletal structure.

This paper, which is based on an applied developmental research with a descriptive/casual study's strategy, focuses on a case study on Gilan province. It uses some documentary evidences and literature on the one hand and investigates the social/cultural conditions and the concept of rural skeleton from a holistic perspective on the other hand. In the most sections, the theoretical basis of this qualitative research is according to the structuralism paradigm and it is independent of common literature and documentation. The field study data of the paper have been collected from 150 villages of Gilan among 2800 residential villages during 14 years. These villages have been selected among the different cultural areas in the east and the west of Gilan and the climate zones in the mountains, foothills, plains and shorelines in order to make a generalization to the other regions of Gilan. In this paper, at first the social factors influencing the settlements' skeleton was generally investigated and then, the architecture of Gilan province's villages has been studied in terms of social/cultural characteristics and some of its most important aspects were explained.

The research findings indicate that the rural people's social interactions are influenced by the natural conditions on the one hand and are based on economic characteristics and livelihood practices on the other hand. This issue itself is one of the factors to coordinate the social actions and leads to integrate the rural residents' social and cultural relations. All of these factors create a homogeneous skeletal texture that has been made in response to the same social, cultural, livelihood and climatic demands. The basic elements of the human societies in Gilan province's villages include the population, culture, material products, technology, social systems and social institutions that have a significant impact on the rural skeletal characteristics such as land-use, streets network, neighborhood classification system, and architectural structure. These factors along with the skeletal form of residential complex lead to the social and personal authentication that not only is influenced by the culture and living methods, but also it establishes some requirements for the residential skeleton that is resulted from the human significant social actions.