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Archaeological Evidence for Community Resilience and Sustainability: A Bibliometric and Quantitative Review

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Archaeology is often argued to provide a unique long-term perspective on humans that can be utilised for effective policy-making, for example, in discussions of resilience and sustainability. However, the specific archaeological evidence for resilient/sustainable systems is rarely explored, with these terms often used simply to describe a community that survived a particular shock. In this study, a set of 74 case studies of papers discussing archaeological evidence for resilience/sustainability are identified and analysed using bibliometric methods. Variables from the papers are also quantified to assess patterns and provide a review of current knowledge. A great variety of scales of analysis, case study locations, stressors, resilient/sustainable characteristics, and archaeological evidence types are present. Climate change was the most cited stressor (n = 40) and strategies relating to natural resources were common across case studies, especially subsistence adaptations (n = 35), other solutions to subsistence deficiencies (n = 23), and water management (n = 23). Resilient/sustainable characteristics were often in direct contrast to one-another, suggesting the combination of factors is more important than each factor taken individually. Further quantification of well-defined variables within a formally-produced framework is required to extract greater value from archaeological case studies of resilience/sustainability.
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Citation: Jacobson, M.J.
Archaeological Evidence for
Community Resilience and
Sustainability: A Bibliometric and
Quantitative Review. Sustainability
2022,14, 16591. https://doi.org/
10.3390/su142416591
Academic Editors: Andrea Zerboni,
Filippo Brandolini, Francesco Carrer
and Guido S. Mariani
Received: 31 October 2022
Accepted: 9 December 2022
Published: 11 December 2022
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
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Copyright: © 2022 by the author.
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Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
sustainability
Article
Archaeological Evidence for Community Resilience and
Sustainability: A Bibliometric and Quantitative Review
Matthew J. Jacobson 1,2
1German Archaeological Institute (DAI), Podbielskialle 69-71, D-14195 Berlin, Germany;
matthew.jacobson@glasgow.ac.uk
2Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Abstract:
Archaeology is often argued to provide a unique long-term perspective on humans that
can be utilised for effective policy-making, for example, in discussions of resilience and sustainability.
However, the specific archaeological evidence for resilient/sustainable systems is rarely explored,
with these terms often used simply to describe a community that survived a particular shock. In this
study, a set of 74 case studies of papers discussing archaeological evidence for resilience/sustainability
are identified and analysed using bibliometric methods. Variables from the papers are also quantified
to assess patterns and provide a review of current knowledge. A great variety of scales of analysis,
case study locations, stressors, resilient/sustainable characteristics, and archaeological evidence
types are present. Climate change was the most cited stressor (n= 40) and strategies relating to
natural resources were common across case studies, especially subsistence adaptations (n= 35), other
solutions to subsistence deficiencies (n= 23), and water management (n= 23). Resilient/sustainable
characteristics were often in direct contrast to one-another, suggesting the combination of factors is
more important than each factor taken individually. Further quantification of well-defined variables
within a formally-produced framework is required to extract greater value from archaeological case
studies of resilience/sustainability.
Keywords:
archaeology; resilience; sustainability; citation analysis; collapse; climate change; agriculture;
natural resources
1. Introduction
Resilience and sustainability are buzzwords with associated theory articles that are
widely cited [
1
–
13
]. In the field of archaeology, the concepts have also been the focus of
extensive theoretical discussions [
14
–
23
] and are commonly used to describe communities
in global case studies (e.g., [
24
–
97
]). However, definitions of resilience and sustainability
remain debated and vary between and within research fields, as well as over time. In
this study, the following definitions are used, which appear frequently in theory articles
(e.g., [
9
,
16
]) and have been adopted in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC: e.g., [
98
,
99
]): resilience is the capacity of a system to retain or rapidly restore
its essential functions under changing conditions, whereas sustainability is the ability of
a system to meet the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future.
Whilst the two concepts are distinct, they are studied together in this paper as they have
significant overlap and are often (incorrectly) used interchangeably.
Archaeological case studies that aim to assess resilience/sustainability are often ac-
companied by the claim that insights from the past can be used to predict and prepare for
future challenges [
23
]. This logic has demonstrated its value elsewhere, for example, with
earth systems research providing invaluable information that has been used to predict and
mitigate against the impacts of geological and environmental events [
100
]. However, the
specific archaeological evidence for resilient/sustainable characteristics and the combina-
tion of characteristics that best enable human survival are rarely explored; these terms are
often used simply to describe a community that survived a particular shock.
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142416591 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 2 of 24
The current paper acts as a starting point for more effective research into this topic. For this,
bibliometric analysis is conducted on the ten top-cited papers discussing resilience/sustainability
theory, both from the wider literature [
1
–
13
] and archaeology [
14
–
23
], and from 74 case study
papers detailing archaeological evidence for resilience/sustainability [
24
–
97
] (Supplementary
Table S1). Subsequently, the 74 case study papers are reviewed and several of their characteristics
are quantified: Location, Scale, Period, Stressor (i.e., why was resilience/sustainability required?),
Characteristic (i.e., how were the community resilient/sustainable?) and Evidence (used to
claim resilient/sustainable characteristic). The results of these analyses enable a summary of
past research, provide new insights from existing data, and highlight several important next
steps for realising the full potential of archaeology in studying resilience/sustainability.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Case Study Identification
To find suitable “papers” (this terminology is chosen to encompass both journal articles and
book chapters) that can act as case studies of archaeological evidence for resilience/sustainability,
a three-pronged approach was taken; this is depicted in Figure 1, with search terms are recorded
in Table 1. All searches were conducted on 11 July 2022. This bibliometric method for identifying
papers was based on previous research by Werner Marx and colleagues [
101
–
104
], with literature
extracted from Web of Science (WoS: https://webofknowledge.com, accessed on 11 July 2022)
and analysed using the software packages VOSviewer v1.6.18 [
105
] (http://www.vosviewer.
com, accessed on 11 July 2022) and CitNetExplorer v1.0.0 [
106
] (www.citnetexplorer.nl, accessed
on 11 July 2022). This analysis was selected as a first step for looking at archaeology’s unique
contribution to resilience/sustainability [
107
–
109
] because it assesses the history of research
whilst avoiding the bias of a traditional literature review, whereby experts inadvertently focus on
their own research interests at the expense of others. Alternatives to WoS were also considered
for this analysis but were not selected due to certain limitations and challenges (see [
110
–
112
]).
Scopus (https://www.scopus.com, accessed on 11 July 2022) provided near-identical results
to WoS for the searches, both in terms of specific papers and overall quantity, and was thus
not further utilised. Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com, accessed 11 July 2022) could
not be utilised due to limited options for filtering of results, bibliometric analyses, and data
extraction. Dimensions (https://www.dimensions.ai, accessed on 11 July 2022) provides more
exhaustive coverage but uses automated approaches that leads to significant amounts of non-
academic literature and duplicates. Sorting through these irrelevant results would have been
too time-consuming for the small number of additional articles it would have provided. If the
findings of this paper relied more heavily on complete coverage of publications, a combination
of multiple databases would be preferable; however, some Google Scholar results have been
included where appropriate (see below).
Table 1. Web of Science searches.
Query Search Term Results
1a: “Title TI = ((resilien * OR sustainab *) AND (archaeology * OR
archeolog * OR ancient)) 1231
1b: “Topic” TS = ((resilien * OR sustainab *) AND (archaeology * OR
archeolog *))
2: “Archaeology
Resilience”
TS = ((resilien * OR sustainab *) AND (archaeology * OR
archeolog *) AND theory) 10
3: “Resilience
Theory” TS = ((resilien * OR sustainab *) AND (theory) 13 *
* Three additional resilience theory articles found in Google Scholar’s top ten most-cited.
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 3 of 24
Sustainability2022,14,165913of24
“archaeology*”(SearchQuery2).Theorypapersfromallfieldswerefoundbytopic
searchingwiththeterms“resilien*”,“sustainab*”and“theory”(SearchQuery3).Asimi‐
larsearchinGoogleScholaridentifiedthreeadditionaltheorypapers,whichwerein‐
cludedinthisstudy(seeTable2).
Figure1.FlowdiagramofWebofSciencesearchsteps.
Table1.WebofSciencesearches.
QuerySearchTermResults
1a:“TitleTI=((resilien*ORsustainab*)AND(archaeology*
ORarcheolog*ORancient))1231
1b:“Topic”TS=((resilien*ORsustainab*)AND(archaeology*
ORarcheolog*))
2:“Archaeology
Resilience”
TS=((resilien*ORsustainab*)AND(archaeology*
ORarcheolog*)ANDtheory)10
3:“Resilience
Theory”TS=((resilien*ORsustainab*)AND(theory)13*
*ThreeadditionalresiliencetheoryarticlesfoundinGoogleScholar’stoptenmost‐cited.
Table2.Resiliencetheorypapersandarchaeologicalresiliencetheory/summarypapers,orderedby
publicationdate.
Authors&YearTitleCitations
ResilienceTheory
Holling,
1973Resilienceandstabilityofecologicalsystems[1]8179
Adger,
2000Socialandecologicalresilience:aretheyrelated?[2]2127
Holling,
2001
Understandingthecomplexityofeconomic,ecological,
andsocialsystems[6]2034
Carpenter
etal.,2001
FromMetaphortoMeasurement:ResilienceofWhatto
What?[7]1832
Figure 1. Flow diagram of Web of Science search steps.
The first step was to search directly for relevant papers by title (Search Query 1a) and
topic (Search Query 1b), using the terms “resilien *”, “sustainab *” and “archaeology *”
(and “archeolog *” to accommodate American English). Topic searches provide articles
that use the terms in their title, abstract and keywords. In WoS, an asterisk (*) is a wildcard
that can represent any group of characters; it was utilized in these searches to enable any
variant of the above words (e.g., resilience and resilient).
As there are likely many papers that discuss archaeological evidence for resilience/
sustainability—without including the terms in their title, abstract or keywords—additional
steps were taken to ensure the highest amount of recall possible. For this, the ten top-
cited resilience/sustainability theory papers from the field of archaeology [
14
–
23
] and all
fields [
1
–
13
] were identified (Table 2). Archaeology theory/summary papers were found
by topic searching with the terms “resilien *”, “sustainab *”, “theory” and “archaeology *”
(Search Query 2). Theory papers from all fields were found by topic searching with the terms
“resilien *”, “sustainab *” and “theory” (Search Query 3). A similar search in Google Scholar
identified three additional theory papers, which were included in this study (see Table 2).
Table 2.
Resilience theory papers and archaeological resilience theory/summary papers, ordered by
publication date.
Authors & Year Title Citations
Resilience Theory
Holling,
1973 Resilience and stability of ecological systems [1] 8179
Adger,
2000 Social and ecological resilience: are they related? [2] 2127
Holling,
2001
Understanding the complexity of economic, ecological,
and social systems [6]2034
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 4 of 24
Table 2. Cont.
Authors & Year Title Citations
Resilience Theory
Carpenter
et al., 2001
From Metaphor to Measurement: Resilience of What
to What? [7]1832
Holling &
Gunderson, 2002 Resilience and adaptive cycles [8] 99 *
Walker
et al., 2004
Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in
Social– ecological Systems [9]2106
Folke,
2006
Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for
social-ecological systems analyses [10]3718
Gallopín,
2006
Linkages between vulnerability, resilience, and
adaptive capacity [11]1438
Nelson et al.,
2007
Adaptation to environmental change: Contributions of
a resilience framework [12]1135
Brand &
Jax, 2007
Focusing the Meaning(s) of Resilience: Resilience as a
Descriptive Concept and a Boundary Object [13]688 *
Norris
et al., 2008
Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of
Capacities, and Strategy for Disaster Readiness [3]2142
Folke
et al., 2010
Resilience Thinking: Integrating Resilience,
Adaptability and Transformability [4]1116
Cote &
Nightingale, 2012
Resilience thinking meets social theory: Situating
social change in socio-ecological systems (SES)
research [5]
623 *
Archaeological Theory/Summaries
Redman &
Kinzig, 2003
Resilience of past landscapes: Resilience theory,
society, and the Longue Durée [14]213
Redman,
2005 Resilience theory in archaeology [15] 201
Redman,
2014
Should sustainability and resilience be combined or
remain distinct pursuits? [16]166
Sundstrom
et al., 2014
Transdisciplinary Application of Cross-Scale
Resilience [17]24
Cumming &
Peterson, 2017
Unifying research on social-ecological resilience and
collapse [18]78
Bradtmöller
et al., 2017
Resilience theory in archaeological practice—an
annotated review [19]42
Middleton,
2017
The show must go on: Collapse, resilience, and
transformation in 21st-century archaeology [20]18
Haldon
et al., 2018
History meets palaeoscience: Consilience and
collaboration in studying past societal responses to
environmental change [21]
63
Haldon &
Rosen, 2018
Society and Environment in the East Mediterranean ca
300–1800 CE. Problems of Resilience, Adaptation and
Transformation. Introductory Essay [22]
11
Nicoll &
Zerboni, 2020
Is the past key to the present? Observations of cultural
continuity and resilience reconstructed from
geoarchaeological records [23]
11
* Resilience theory articles that were in the top ten most-cited in Google Scholar.
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 5 of 24
Citations were extracted from the two key literature datasets and references were
extracted from the archaeological summaries. Here, “citations” refers to later papers citing
the key literature whilst “references” refers to earlier papers cited in the key literature.
The results of Search Query 1a,b and the citations/references extracted from Search
Query 2 and Search Query 3 were compiled into a “Master List” containing 1444 papers.
This list was manually sifted for identification of suitable case studies that claim archaeo-
logical evidence for resilience/sustainability and was found to have very low precision (i.e.,
many irrelevant papers were included). Manual sifting mitigates against a key challenge
in bibliometric assessments: recall and precision are inversely correlated, meaning that
when attempting to find all relevant papers there will be many irrelevant papers in your
results [
102
,
113
]. In the “Master List”, most papers focused on how to conduct archae-
ology sustainably or the resilience of something other than communities (e.g., plant or
animal populations); others discussed community resilience/sustainability but provided
no evidence, simply stating that a community which persisted (or “collapsed”) was (not)
resilient/sustainable. A total of 74 case studies [
24
–
97
] were identified which discuss
archaeological evidence for resilience/sustainability (Supplementary Table S1).
2.2. Dataset Visualization
VOSviewer v1.6.18 [
105
] was used to map co-authorship and keywords of the two key
literature datasets (23 papers) and the case studies (74 papers), using the bibliographic data
extracted from WoS.
The co-authorship map is a “Network Visualization” based on full counting of all
authors, which are represented by nodes. The size of the nodes is proportional to the
number of papers included in this dataset by the author. Nodes (i.e., authors) are positioned
close to, clustered with, and connected by lines to other nodes they have published in
collaboration with (i.e., their co-authors). For the analysis, clusters were normalised by their
“Association strength”, cluster resolution was set to 1.00, and clusters with multiple papers
were manually coloured. The co-authorship map can be used to assess collaborations
between authors and identify key research groups.
The co-occurrence keyword map is an “Overlay Visualization” based on full counting
of any keyword that appears in at least three papers, which are represented by nodes.
All keywords were used, which includes both those supplied by the paper authors and
“KeyWords Plus”, which are provided by WoS. The size of the nodes is proportional to the
number of occurrences of the keyword (i.e., how many papers it appears in). The width of
lines connecting nodes and their proximity is proportional to the number of co-occurrences
of the two keywords (i.e., how many papers they appear in together). For the analysis,
clusters were normalised by their “Association strength” and cluster resolution was set
to 1.00. The overlay is a colour scale representing the mean publication date of papers
containing each keyword. Therefore, the keyword map can be used to easily identify
related research topics and the evolution of keyword prevalence (“buzzwords”) over time.
CitNetExplorer v1.0.0 [
106
] was used to visualize the citation network of the two key
literature datasets (23 papers) and the case studies (74 papers), using the bibliographic data
extracted from WoS. For the analysis, all 97 papers were included in the network and the
two key literature datasets were manually coloured; all other parameters are left as their
default. The citation network orders the papers (nodes) by publication date and connects
later papers to those they cite, thus producing a history of research into archaeological
evidence for resilience/sustainability.
2.3. Case Study Quantification
The 74 case study papers were manually reviewed, and several aspects were quanti-
fied: Scale, Location, Period, Stressor (i.e., why was resilience/sustainability required?),
Characteristic (i.e., how were the community resilient/sustainable?) and Evidence (used to
claim resilient/sustainable characteristic). These are categorised as follows:
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 6 of 24
•
Scale—case studies analyse resilience/sustainability for: (1) a household, (2) a single
settlement/city, (3) a locality, roughly defined as a group of fewer than 10 settlements
in an area smaller than 100 km
2
, (4) a sub-region, one area containing numerous
settlements within a polity, (5) a region, a single polity or similar in scale (6) a macro-
region, the size of multiple polities.
•
Location—latitude and longitude coordinates from the centre of the case study region
are provided, which is then defined according to scale (settlement/city, locality, sub-
region, region, macro-region) and by continent.
•
Period—the start and end date of the case study, as provided by the authors, are
recorded.
•
Stressor, characteristic, and evidence—each of these variables was noted whilst reading
the case study papers and were then re-evaluated to create consistent groups. They
are also counted (i.e., the number of stressors is noted). The full list of these variables
can be found in Supplementary Table S1.
3. Results
3.1. Co-Authorship Map
A co-authorship map of the two key literature datasets (23 papers) and the case studies
(74 papers) was produced to assess collaborations between individual authors, represented
by nodes in Figure 2. This analysis reveals the field to be largely collaborative, with
archaeologists frequently working alongside researchers that produce reconstructions of
the stressors (e.g., ecologists, palaeoclimatologists, or volcanologists). Only 10 of the papers
have a single author and the largest number of authors on a single paper is 42; there are
an average of 4.1 authors per paper. However, there is a complete paucity of connections
between the 67 total clusters. Of these, 58 clusters are comprised of only a single paper
(86.6% of clusters, 60% of papers), partially resulting from the fact that 367 of the total
397 authors (92.4%) have only published a single relevant paper in this dataset. This is
indicative of resilience and sustainability as buzzwords. Of the remaining authors, only
five published three papers (Carpenter, Dunning, Lancelotti, Walker, and Weiberg) and two
published four (Holling and Redman).
The remaining eight clusters (i.e., those containing multiple papers) are numbered by
author count. Cluster 1 is the largest cluster and contains six papers discussing resilience in
case studies across Eurasia, with a total of 88 authors. The lefthand side of this cluster is
comprised of two papers with a high number of co-authors discussing prehistoric resilience
during the last glacial [
87
] and early Holocene [
61
]; the other side of the cluster contains four
papers discussing agricultural and using radiocarbon dates [
36
,
51
,
67
,
82
]. Cluster 2 links to-
gether four papers from 24 authors. Three of these papers discuss resilient/sustainable land-
use in pre-Columbian Amazonia [
37
,
46
,
90
] whilst the last is focused on Mayan resource
management in Belize [
28
]. Cluster 3 is comprised of six papers authored by members of
the Climate Change and History Research Institute (CCHRI), Princeton University, and col-
leagues (22 authors). Two of these are key archaeological theory/summary papers [
21
,
22
].
This interdisciplinary group focuses on the impact of ancient climate change, which these
papers discuss for the Neolithic period in SW Asia [
72
,
74
] and the Late Antique Eastern
Mediterranean [
73
,
91
]. Many other key papers relating to historical climate change impacts
have been published by this group, with a focus on collaboration between paleo-scientists
and archaeologists/historians, especially relating to the Byzantine Empire [
114
]. Cluster 4
is centred around three papers by Carla Lancelotti [
29
,
63
,
68
], with 19 total authors. These
papers focus on human-environment dynamics using archaeobotanical remains and how
this relates to human resilience. Lancelotti has also published an important archaeological
theory paper that provides a framework indicating key variables for resilience in small-scale
societies [
115
]. This paper was the 11th top-cited paper in WoS Query 2 and is discussed
further below. Cluster 5 is the largest in terms of papers, with 11 by 19 authors. This
cluster encompasses many of the key literature datasets, with three of the archaeological
theory papers by Charles Redman [
14
–
16
] and seven of the theory papers [
1
,
4
,
6
–
10
]. One
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 7 of 24
additional paper is included here that has Redman as a co-author [
56
]. Redman and Holling
are the only two authors in this dataset to have four papers included, this is visualized by
the size of their node in Figure 2. Cluster 6, similarly to cluster 4, is centred around three
papers by one author, Nicholas Dunning [
59
,
85
,
88
], with 13 total authors. These papers
discuss both resilience and sustainability, as well as collapse, for the ancient Maya in the
Yucatán Peninsula. Two of the papers are specific to the city of Tikal, Guatemala, whilst
the other is a comparison of sites across the Maya lowlands. One paper from Cluster 2 [
28
]
could arguably have been included here if they were manually sorted by theme. Cluster 7
is comprised of five authors, with two publications summarizing water technologies and
changing climatic conditions on Crete [
76
,
84
]. Cluster 8 is another centred around three
papers sharing one author, Erika Weiberg [
32
,
62
,
70
], and three total authors, colleagues
from Uppsala University. The Peloponnese, and Aegean region more broadly, are the focus
in these papers. Weiberg and colleagues have written extensively about climate-society
interactions in the Eastern Mediterranean, including detailed sophisticated analyses of
resilience and persistence [116,117].
Sustainability 2022, 14, 16591 7 of 24
of sites across the Maya lowlands. One paper from Cluster 2 [28] could arguably have
been included here if they were manually sorted by theme. Cluster 7 is comprised of five
authors, with two publications summarizing water technologies and changing climatic
conditions on Crete [76,84]. Cluster 8 is another centred around three papers sharing one
author, Erika Weiberg [32,62,70], and three total authors, colleagues from Uppsala Uni-
versity. The Peloponnese, and Aegean region more broadly, are the focus in these papers.
Weiberg and colleagues have written extensively about climate-society interactions in the
Eastern Mediterranean, including detailed sophisticated analyses of resilience and persis-
tence [116,117].
Figure 2. Co-authorship map of all 397 authors from the two key literature datasets (23 papers) and
the case studies (74 papers). Nodes represent individual authors and their size is proportional to the
number of papers by the author included in this dataset. Clusters with multiple papers are coloured
and numbered by author count. Figure produced in VOSviewer.
3.2. Keyword Map
A keyword map was produced to assess the changing trends of focus among the two
key literature datasets (23 papers) and the case studies (74 papers), presented in Figure 3.
For this map, all keywords were used; this includes both those supplied by the paper au-
thors and “KeyWords Plus”, which are provided by WoS.
Figure 2.
Co-authorship map of all 397 authors from the two key literature datasets (23 papers) and
the case studies (74 papers). Nodes represent individual authors and their size is proportional to the
number of papers by the author included in this dataset. Clusters with multiple papers are coloured
and numbered by author count. Figure produced in VOSviewer.
3.2. Keyword Map
A keyword map was produced to assess the changing trends of focus among the two
key literature datasets (23 papers) and the case studies (74 papers), presented in Figure 3.
For this map, all keywords were used; this includes both those supplied by the paper
authors and “KeyWords Plus”, which are provided by WoS.
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 8 of 24
Sustainability2022,14,165918of24
Figure3.Co‐occurrencemapforkeywordswithaminimumof3occurrences(n=60)inthetwokey
literaturedatasets(23papers)andthecasestudies(74papers).Nodesrepresentkeywords,theirsize
isproportionaltooccurrences,andthewidthofconnectinglinesisproportionaltothenumberof
co‐occurrences.Thecolourofnodescorrespondstotheiraveragepublicationdate.Figureproduced
inVOSviewer.
Thehighestoccurringkeywordsincludethesearchtermsofresilience(36),archaeol‐
ogy(18),andsustainability(15),aswellasrelatedtermssuchascollapse(20)andvulner‐
ability(13).Additionally,climateandadaptationappearfrequentlybutwithmultiplevar‐
iations:33countsofclimate,climatechangeorclimate‐change;17countsofadaptation,
adaptivecapacity,oradaptivecycles.Themapalsorevealskeywordchangesovertime,
withsustainabilityandrelatedterms(e.g.,biodiversity,management,adaptivecapacity)
averagingolderpublicationdates;theassociatedgraphshowsthatsustainabilitywasa
keywordinonlysixpapersinthelastfiveyears(12.2%)comparedtoeighteenusesof
resilience(36.7%).KeywordoccurrencesovertimecanalsobeseeninFigure4.Terms
relatingtoclimatehaveseenmorefrequentuseinrecentyearsaswell,withthefirstuse
in2007andarefeaturedin46.9%ofpaperspublishedinthelastfiveyears.Overall,more
recentkeywordsrelatetospecifictypesofarchaeologicalanalysis/evidence(e.g.,charcoal
analysis,archaeobotany),variablesimpactedbystressors(e.g.,agriculture,land‐use,
landscape),orstudyperiods(e.g.,iron‐age,ice‐age,Holocene).Keywordsfeaturingin
olderpapersaremorefrequentlyecologicalterms(e.g.,sustainability,biodiversity,man‐
agement,adaptivecapacity),theirolderaveragedatesarepartiallytheresultofthekey
theorypapers,whicharelargelyfromthefieldofecology.
Figure 3.
Co-occurrence map for keywords with a minimum of 3 occurrences (n= 60) in the two key
literature datasets (23 papers) and the case studies (74 papers). Nodes represent keywords, their size
is proportional to occurrences, and the width of connecting lines is proportional to the number of
co-occurrences. The colour of nodes corresponds to their average publication date. Figure produced
in VOSviewer.
The highest occurring keywords include the search terms of resilience (36), archaeology
(18), and sustainability (15), as well as related terms such as collapse (20) and vulnerability
(13). Additionally, climate and adaptation appear frequently but with multiple variations:
33 counts of climate, climate change or climate-change; 17 counts of adaptation, adaptive
capacity, or adaptive cycles. The map also reveals keyword changes over time, with sus-
tainability and related terms (e.g., biodiversity, management, adaptive capacity) averaging
older publication dates; the associated graph shows that sustainability was a keyword in
only six papers in the last five years (12.2%) compared to eighteen uses of resilience (36.7%).
Keyword occurrences over time can also be seen in Figure 4. Terms relating to climate have
seen more frequent use in recent years as well, with the first use in 2007 and are featured in
46.9% of papers published in the last five years. Overall, more recent keywords relate to
specific types of archaeological analysis/evidence (e.g., charcoal analysis, archaeobotany),
variables impacted by stressors (e.g., agriculture, land-use, landscape), or study periods
(e.g., iron-age, ice-age, Holocene). Keywords featuring in older papers are more frequently
ecological terms (e.g., sustainability, biodiversity, management, adaptive capacity), their
older average dates are partially the result of the key theory papers, which are largely from
the field of ecology.
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 9 of 24
Sustainability2022,14,165919of24
Figure4.Patternsofthekeywords,stressors,characteristics,andevidenceincludedinthe74case
studypapersovertime.Thefivemostcommonexamplesofeachareincluded;“archaeology”asa
keywordwasignored.
3.3.CitationNetwork
Thecitationnetworkofthetwokeyliteraturedatasets(23papers)andthecasestud‐
ies(74papers)ispresentedinFigure5;thisvisualiseswhichpapersciteone‐another.Cit‐
NetExploreralsoidentifiescitedpapersnotinthedataset,thesewereremovedfromFig‐
ure5.Thehighestinternally‐citedpapers(i.e.,paperscitedbythosewithinthedataset
[106])are:(1)thekeyresiliencetheorypapersbyHolling[1,6,8]—with20citations(1973),
16citations(2001),and12citations(2002),aswellasthebookcontainingthe2002chapter
[118],whichwascited21times;(2)thepaper“ResilienceTheoryinArchaeology”byRed‐
man[15],with19citations;(3)apopularbook[119]andajournalarticle[120]discussing
theconceptof“collapse”,with13and11citations,respectively;(4)asummaryofthe
“Grandchallengesforarchaeology”whichhighlightsresilienceandhuman‐environment
interactionsasimportant[121],with10citations;and(5)anotherkeytheorypaperbyCar‐
penteretal.[7],with8citations.
Theearliestpublicationinthedatasetisapaperfrom1973byHolling[1],whichin‐
troducedtheconceptofresilienceforstudyingecologicalsystems.Thenextpapersinthe
dataset,whichwerepublishedseveraldecadeslaterintheearly2000s,introducedthe
conceptofresilienceforstudyingsocio‐ecologicalsystems.Manyofthesepapersarein
Cluster5ofFigure2,arehighly‐cited(bothinternallyandexternally)andincludekey
authorswithmultiplepublications.Importanttonotethathere,theadaptivecycleand
panarchyconceptsareintroduced,whichhaveremainedextensivelyusedinarchaeology
[19];thishasremainedthecasedespitecritiquesstatingitisanon‐scientificnarrativede‐
vice[122].Thefirstarchaeologicalusesofresiliencetheory(inthisdataset)werealsopub‐
lishedinthemid‐2000s,withRedmanastheprimaryauthor[14,15].Here,itisarguedthat
archaeologycanbeutilisedtostudyagreatervarietyofsocio‐ecologicalsystemsthan
availableinthepresentday,andoverlongertimescales,asin[107].Itisinterestingtonote
herethatallofthekeytheorypapersfocusprimarilyonresilienceratherthansustainabil‐
ity,thereareotherpapersthatdodiscusssustainabilitypublishedintheearly2000s(e.g.,
Tainter,2000[123]);however,thesearecitedlessfrequently,despitethefactthatsustain‐
abilityasakeywordismoreprominentinearlierarticles,seeFigures3and4.In2006,the
firstcasestudyispublishedbyNelson[95],whoalsoarguedforaresilienceframework
thefollowingyear[12].Patternsobservedinthe74casestudypaperswerebetter‐assessed
byquantificationoftheirkeyaspects,seebelow.
Figure 4.
Patterns of the keywords, stressors, characteristics, and evidence included in the 74 case
study papers over time. The five most common examples of each are included; “archaeology” as a
keyword was ignored.
3.3. Citation Network
The citation network of the two key literature datasets (23 papers) and the case studies
(74 papers) is presented in Figure 5; this visualises which papers cite one-another. CitNet-
Explorer also identifies cited papers not in the dataset, these were removed from Figure 5.
The highest internally-cited papers (i.e., papers cited by those within the dataset [
106
]) are:
(1) the key resilience theory papers by Holling [
1
,
6
,
8
]—with 20 citations (1973), 16 citations
(2001), and 12 citations (2002), as well as the book containing the 2002 chapter [
118
], which
was cited 21 times; (2) the paper “Resilience Theory in Archaeology” by Redman [
15
], with
19 citations; (3) a popular book [
119
] and a journal article [
120
] discussing the concept of
“collapse”, with 13 and 11 citations, respectively; (4) a summary of the “Grand challenges
for archaeology” which highlights resilience and human-environment interactions as im-
portant [
121
], with 10 citations; and (5) another key theory paper by Carpenter et al. [
7
],
with 8 citations.
The earliest publication in the dataset is a paper from 1973 by Holling [
1
], which
introduced the concept of resilience for studying ecological systems. The next papers in the
dataset, which were published several decades later in the early 2000s, introduced the con-
cept of resilience for studying socio-ecological systems. Many of these papers are in Cluster
5 of Figure 2, are highly-cited (both internally and externally) and include key authors
with multiple publications. Important to note that here, the adaptive cycle and panarchy
concepts are introduced, which have remained extensively used in archaeology [
19
]; this
has remained the case despite critiques stating it is a non-scientific narrative device [
122
].
The first archaeological uses of resilience theory (in this dataset) were also published in the
mid-2000s, with Redman as the primary author [
14
,
15
]. Here, it is argued that archaeology
can be utilised to study a greater variety of socio-ecological systems than available in the
present day, and over longer timescales, as in [
107
]. It is interesting to note here that all
of the key theory papers focus primarily on resilience rather than sustainability, there
are other papers that do discuss sustainability published in the early 2000s (e.g., Tainter,
2000 [
123
]); however, these are cited less frequently, despite the fact that sustainability
as a keyword is more prominent in earlier articles, see Figures 3and 4. In 2006, the first
case study is published by Nelson [
95
], who also argued for a resilience framework the
following year [
12
]. Patterns observed in the 74 case study papers were better-assessed by
quantification of their key aspects, see below.
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Sustainability2022,14,1659110of24
Figure5.Citationnetwork(221citationlinks)ofthe74casestudypapers(greynodes),13theory
papers(yellownodes),and10archaeologicaltheory/summarypapers(purplenodes).Thetopright
sectionshowsthecentralclusterfrom2010to2022.FigureproducedinCitNetExplorer.
3.4.CaseStudyMetadata
Thenumberofcasestudypapersdiscussingarchaeologicalevidenceforresili‐
ence/sustainabilityhasmostlyshownasteadyincreaseovertime.Atotalof14papers
werepublishedin2021,theyearwiththemostcasestudies,however,thenumberpub‐
lishedin2022(currently9)mayexceedthisconsideringtheWoSsearchwasperformed
on11July2022.Therearesomeexceptionstothispattern,notably2012and2020.Five
casestudypaperswerepublishedin2012,twoofwhich[86,89]resultedfromabooktitled
“SurvivingSuddenEnvironmentalChange:AnswersfromArchaeology”[124].Oneof
thesepertainstotheancientMaya,asdoanothertwopublishedinPNASwithDunning
asoneoftheauthors(fromCluster6inFigure2).Increasedinterestatthistimemayresult
fromtheMayacalendar‐relatedpredictionthattheworldwouldendon21December
2012,whichcausedapronouncedpeakinpublicationsrelatingtotheMayacollapsein
2012[101].InFigure6,asignificantdipintheupwardtrendofpublicationsisvisiblefor
2020;thisislikelyduetotheCOVID‐19pandemic,whichloweredtheaverageamountof
newpublications,submissions,andprojectsundertakenbyscientists[125].
ThescaleandglobaldistributionofcasestudiesarepresentedinFigure7.Regarding
scale,thecategorywiththemostcasestudiesissub‐regional(29papers),followedbyset‐
tlement/city(19papers),local(12papers)andmacro‐regional(9papers);thereareonly
threepapersataregionalscaleandtwoatthehouseholdscale.However,goingforwards
thesecategoriesshouldbebetterdefined(bysize)duetovariationsintheareaofcoun‐
tries.Casestudiesarespreadglobally,appearingoneverycontinentexceptAntarctica.
EuropeandAsiahavethemost,with21casestudieseach.NorthandSouthAmericahave
17and8casestudies,respectively.Africahasonlyfivecasestudies,locatedentirelyinthe
east.Oceaniaistheleastrepresented,withonlytwocasestudies.Twoareaswithahigh
densityofcasestudiesareshownascut‐outsinFigure7:theYucatánPeninsula,which
hassixcasestudies,andtheEasternMediterranean,withseventeencasestudies.
Figure 5.
Citation network (221 citation links) of the 74 case study papers (grey nodes), 13 theory
papers (yellow nodes), and 10 archaeological theory/summary papers (purple nodes). The top right
section shows the central cluster from 2010 to 2022. Figure produced in CitNetExplorer.
3.4. Case Study Metadata
The number of case study papers discussing archaeological evidence for resilience/
sustainability has mostly shown a steady increase over time. A total of 14 papers were
published in 2021, the year with the most case studies, however, the number published
in 2022 (currently 9) may exceed this considering the WoS search was performed on
11 July 2022. There are some exceptions to this pattern, notably 2012 and 2020. Five case
study papers were published in 2012, two of which [
86
,
89
] resulted from a book titled
“Surviving Sudden Environmental Change: Answers from Archaeology” [
124
]. One of
these pertains to the ancient Maya, as do another two published in PNAS with Dunning as
one of the authors (from Cluster 6 in Figure 2). Increased interest at this time may result
from the Maya calendar-related prediction that the world would end on 21 December
2012, which caused a pronounced peak in publications relating to the Maya collapse in
2012 [
101
]. In Figure 6, a significant dip in the upward trend of publications is visible for
2020; this is likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which lowered the average amount of
new publications, submissions, and projects undertaken by scientists [125].
The scale and global distribution of case studies are presented in Figure 7. Regarding
scale, the category with the most case studies is sub-regional (29 papers), followed by
settlement/city (19 papers), local (12 papers) and macro-regional (9 papers); there are only
three papers at a regional scale and two at the household scale. However, going forwards
these categories should be better defined (by size) due to variations in the area of countries.
Case studies are spread globally, appearing on every continent except Antarctica. Europe
and Asia have the most, with 21 case studies each. North and South America have 17 and
8 case studies, respectively. Africa has only five case studies, located entirely in the east.
Oceania is the least represented, with only two case studies. Two areas with a high density
of case studies are shown as cut-outs in Figure 7: the Yucatán Peninsula, which has six case
studies, and the Eastern Mediterranean, with seventeen case studies.
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Sustainability2022,14,1659111of24
Figure6.Publicationyearsforthe74casestudypapers(grey),13theorypapers(yellow),and10
archaeologicaltheory/summarypapers(purple).ThisfiguredoesnotdisplaythefirstpaperbyHol‐
ling(1973)forclarity.
Themoreimportantquantifiedvariablesofstressor,characteristic,andevidence
wereidentifiedbyreviewingeachindividualcasestudypaper.Thefullresultsofthe
quantificationcanbefoundinSupplementaryTableS1;temporalchangesinthepreva‐
lenceofvariablesarevisualisedinFigure4.
Stressors(i.e.,whywasresilience/sustainabilityrequired?)arepresentedinFigure
8a.Thereare23differentstressors,with138totaloccurrences,meaningthereisanaverage
of1.9stressorsineachcasestudy.Climate/weatherisbyfarthemostcommonlyoccurring
stressor,appearingin40(54%)ofthecasestudies.Otherstressorscanbeseparatedinto
threemaingroups.Thefirstgroupisresourcedepletion/scarcity,whichisobservedfor
food(n=16:22%),water(n=8:11%),soils(n=7:9%),andtrees(n=6:8%).Thesecondgroup
areallanthropogenicchallenges,forexamplebroaderregionaldecline(n=8:11%)and
separation(n=5:7%).Thefinalgroupiscomprisedofotherenvironmentalstressors,the
mostcommonofwhicharefloods(n=6:8%),erosion(n=5:7%),andvolcanism(n=4:5%).
Characteristics(i.e.,howwerethecommunityresilient/sustainable?)arepresentedin
Figure8b.Thereare50differentcharacteristics,with169totaloccurrences,meaningthere
isanaverageof2.3characteristicsineachcasestudy.Subsistencestrategiesweremost
frequently‐cited,appearingin37(50%)ofthecasestudies;morespecificdetailsofthe
utilisedstrategiesarepresentedinFigure8d.Additionally,afurther23(31%)casestudies
thatdidnotdescribesubsistencestrategiesasimportantdidincludevariablesthatare
subsistence‐adjacent(tradingfoodresources,managingwildfauna/flora(foodresources),
soilorwatermanagementforsubsistence).Otherfrequentlyrecurringcharacteristicsare
relatedtowatermanagement(n=23:31%)ormoving(settlements,mobility,migration;n
=15:20%).Thedistinctionbetweenthesecharacteristicsisthatmovingsettlementsand
Figure 6.
Publication years for the 74 case study papers (grey), 13 theory papers (yellow), and
10 archaeological theory/summary papers (purple). This figure does not display the first paper by
Holling (1973) for clarity.
The more important quantified variables of stressor, characteristic, and evidence
were identified by reviewing each individual case study paper. The full results of the
quantification can be found in Supplementary Table S1; temporal changes in the prevalence
of variables are visualised in Figure 4.
Stressors (i.e., why was resilience/sustainability required?) are presented in Figure 8a.
There are 23 different stressors, with 138 total occurrences, meaning there is an average of
1.9 stressors in each case study. Climate/weather is by far the most commonly occurring
stressor, appearing in 40 (54%) of the case studies. Other stressors can be separated into
three main groups. The first group is resource depletion/scarcity, which is observed for
food (n= 16:22%), water (n= 8:11%), soils (n= 7:9%), and trees (n= 6:8%). The second
group are all anthropogenic challenges, for example broader regional decline (n= 8:11%)
and separation (n = 5:7%). The final group is comprised of other environmental stressors,
the most common of which are floods (n= 6:8%), erosion (n= 5:7%), and volcanism
(n= 4:5%).
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 12 of 24
Sustainability2022,14,1659112of24
migrationarespecificresponses,whereasmobilityisanestablishedpatternofmoving
aroundthelandscape.Therearenumerousothercharacteristicsfoundtopromoteresili‐
ence/sustainability,withmanyonlystatedinone(14characteristics)ortwo(13character‐
istics)casestudies.
Figure7.Mapshowingthelocationofthe74casestudypapers.Cut‐outsshowtworegionswitha
highdensityofcasestudies:theYucatánPeninsulaandtheEasternMediterranean.Thepiechart
showstheproportionofcasestudyscales,withcolourscorrespondingtothepointsonthemap.
Evidencetypes(usedtoclaimresilient/sustainablecharacteristic)arepresentedin
Figure8c.Thereare26differentevidencetypes,with246totaloccurrences,meaningthere
isanaverageof3.3evidencetypesineachcasestudy.Therearefiveevidencetypesused
inmorethantwentycasestudies:architecture(n=29:39%),settlementpatterns(n=
24:32%),zoo‐archaeologicalremains(n=24:32%),artefacts(n=22:30%),andseeds(n=
21:28%).
Figure 7.
Map showing the location of the 74 case study papers. Cut-outs show two regions with a
high density of case studies: the Yucatán Peninsula and the Eastern Mediterranean. The pie chart
shows the proportion of case study scales, with colours corresponding to the points on the map.
Characteristics (i.e., how were the community resilient/sustainable?) are presented
in Figure 8b. There are 50 different characteristics, with 169 total occurrences, meaning
there is an average of 2.3 characteristics in each case study. Subsistence strategies were
most frequently-cited, appearing in 37 (50%) of the case studies; more specific details of
the utilised strategies are presented in Figure 8d. Additionally, a further 23 (31%) case
studies that did not describe subsistence strategies as important did include variables
that are subsistence-adjacent (trading food resources, managing wild fauna/flora (food
resources), soil or water management for subsistence). Other frequently recurring charac-
teristics are related to water management (n= 23:31%) or moving (settlements, mobility,
migration; n= 15:20%). The distinction between these characteristics is that moving set-
tlements and migration are specific responses, whereas mobility is an established pattern
of moving around the landscape. There are numerous other characteristics found to pro-
mote resilience/sustainability, with many only stated in one (14 characteristics) or two
(13 characteristics) case studies.
Evidence types (used to claim resilient/sustainable characteristic) are presented in
Figure 8c. There are 26 different evidence types, with 246 total occurrences, meaning there
is an average of 3.3 evidence types in each case study. There are five evidence types used in
more than twenty case studies: architecture (n= 29:39%), settlement patterns (n= 24:32%),
zoo-archaeological remains (n= 24:32%), artefacts (n= 22:30%), and seeds (n= 21:28%).
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 13 of 24
Sustainability 2022, 14, 16591 13 of 24
Figure 8. Case study data. (a) Stressors, i.e., what they were being resilient to; (b) resilient/sustaina-
ble characteristics; (c) the evidence used to argue resilience; (d) subdivisions of the largest category
in (b): subsistence strategies. Variables that appeared only once were not included, except in (d).
4. Discussion
The present bibliometric and quantitative review is based on papers (available from
the WoS literature database) that discuss resilience and/or sustainability in archaeological
case studies. There are several limitations to the bibliometric analysis, which result in the
number of case studies being relatively small (n = 74) and, despite measures to enhance
recall (extracting citations and references from the key literature), the list is not exhaustive.
Firstly, only articles published in English are included in the dataset. Whilst up to 90% of
scientific publications are written in English [126], the proportion is likely lower in
Figure 8.
Case study data. (
a
) Stressors, i.e., what they were being resilient to; (
b
) resilient/sustainable
characteristics; (
c
) the evidence used to argue resilience; (
d
) subdivisions of the largest category in
(b): subsistence strategies. Variables that appeared only once were not included, except in (d).
4. Discussion
The present bibliometric and quantitative review is based on papers (available from the
WoS literature database) that discuss resilience and/or sustainability in archaeological case
studies. There are several limitations to the bibliometric analysis, which result in the number
of case studies being relatively small (n= 74) and, despite measures to enhance recall
(extracting citations and references from the key literature), the list is not exhaustive. Firstly,
only articles published in English are included in the dataset. Whilst up to 90% of scientific
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 14 of 24
publications are written in English [
126
], the proportion is likely lower in archaeology,
suggesting at least 10% of relevant papers are missing from this dataset from the outset.
Secondly, as with the social sciences and the humanities more broadly, a significant amount
of archaeological research is published in books and discipline-specific journals that are
not indexed in WoS [
127
]. Lack of completeness in this dataset is exemplified by the fact
that only 5/74 (7%) of the case studies are from books and a key book on archaeological
evidence for resilience by Ronald Faulseit [
128
] was not included. This book contains four
chapters with “resilience” in the title and at least five other relevant chapters, which could
feasibly have been case studies. Furthermore, a recent article by Tamara Lewit [
129
] and an
additional chapter by Erika Weiberg [
116
] were not found despite containing “resilience”,
“theory”, and “archaeology” in their titles/abstracts. Regardless of these weaknesses,
the bibliometric approach employed here has identified numerous key case studies from
which patterns can be observed. The bias of a traditional literature review has also been
avoided, whereby experts inadvertently focus on their own research interests at the expense
of others.
The bibliometric analysis completed in this paper revealed relationships between
papers, authors, and keywords. One important aspect identified in this analysis relates to
definitions. Archaeologists in this dataset tend to rely on early definitions of resilience by
Holling (in 1973 and 2001/2) and Carpenter (in 2001), or do not cite a definition, see Citation
Network: Figure 5. These studies are not from archaeology, they are from ecology, a field in
which the definition of “resilience” has both evolved significantly and remained debated
since (in many of the other key literature papers and more recently, e.g., [
130
]). More recent
ecological concepts and methods should be better utilised by archaeology. One valuable
example of this is found in a case study paper by Riris and de Souza [
37
], which developed
measures of resistance and resilience with radiocarbon datasets; creating replicable formal
metrics increases the wider utility of archaeological data (discussed further below). A
reconsideration of definitions and terminology is required in archaeology, with the focus
needing to shift towards clarity and simplicity. For example, the concept of “persistence”
may be more relevant than resilience for archaeological case studies. This term more closely
links to the ultimate purported goal of many of the case studies: studying the past so that
we can emulate what enabled survival and avoid what led to collapse [131].
Resilience and sustainability are buzzwords, as reflected in the shift in their use
over time (Figures 3and 4) and the fact that many authors (367/397: 92.4%) only pub-
lish once on the topic in this dataset. Despite this, the number of identified papers dis-
cussing them in relation to archaeology is relatively low. Conducting the equivalent search
(TS = ((archeo * OR archaeo *) AND (KEYWORDS))) but for collapse narratives reveals
a much larger number of papers: 2145 results for “collapse” alone, 22,853 results when
synonyms of collapse are included (i.e., breakdown, decline, demise, doom, end, down-
fall, and fall; from [
102
]). This contrast is further exaggerated by the fact that only 74 of
the 1444 results in the resilience/sustainability “master list” were appropriate case stud-
ies. Similarly, a focus on negative narratives has previously been observed in studies of
human-environment interactions due to their appeal in public discourse [
132
,
133
]. The
prominence of resilience and sustainability (and collapse) as buzzwords ultimately harms
their study; they are often poorly integrated into funding applications and papers to pique
interest or used as a post-hoc explanation for findings without sufficient justification (as
described by Michael E Smith, e.g., [
109
]). The later papers of multi-paper authors in this
dataset—notably Carla Lancelotti, Erika Weiberg, and Nicholas Dunning—are generally
more sophisticated with their analysis of resilience, suggesting that specialisation in these
topics is important to meaningfully progress the field.
Quantification revealed a great variety of scales of analysis, case study locations, stres-
sors (n= 23), resilient/sustainable characteristics (n= 50), and evidence types (n= 26).
In stressors, climate/weather was by far the most frequently occurring, appearing in 40
(54%) case studies. Other stressors could be separated into three main categories: resource
depletion (37 occurrences), anthropogenic challenges (30 occurrences), and environmental
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 15 of 24
events/problems (24 occurrences). In terms of characteristics, adaptations to subsistence
strategies were very important, appearing in 37 (50%) of the case studies. In the case studies
that do not have subsistence strategy adaptations as a resilient/sustainable characteristic,
another 23 (31%) adopted subsistence-adjacent strategies (e.g., trading food or managing
wild food resources). Other commonly recurring characteristics are management of water
infrastructure (n= 17), moving settlements (n= 11), and interconnectivity (n= 6). Yet, over-
all, there was diversity in the characteristics promoting resilience/sustainability, with many
only appearing in one (n= 14) or two (n= 13) case studies. Regarding the utilised evidence,
occurrences are diverse and more evenly distributed than in stressors and characteristics.
The top three are architecture (29:39%), settlement patterns (24:32%), and zoo-archeological
remains (24:32%). However, architecture, as well as artifacts (22:30%), are mostly used as
secondary types of evidence to support other types. More results from the quantification
are discussed below in the context of findings.
A key theme in the dataset is the importance of natural resources, principally related
to agriculture and food. Subsistence strategies, primarily agricultural methods, are recur-
rently stated as characteristics that enable resilience/sustainability, together with subsistence-
adjacent strategies, they are in 60 (81%) case studies. When only case studies where cli-
mate/weather is a stressor are considered, subsistence is at the forefront of all but two
discussions (27:67.5% direct; 11:27.5% subsistence-adjacent). Of direct adaptations, the most
frequently occurring successful response was a subsistence shift (n= 12), which is here de-
fined as adopting a new crop or suite of crops. Additionally recurring were diversification
(n= 8) and existing diversity (n= 4), as well as localisation (n= 5) of subsistence strategies. The
importance of subsistence is also reflected in the evidence types, with paleo-environmental
evidence for species presence appearing a total of 70 times across 43 (58%) case studies.
Other evidence types are likewise related to agriculture (e.g., soil analysis: n= 10) or food
(e.g., storage facilities: n= 5; stable isotopes for diet: n= 3). This may, of course, simply
reflect a research preference for subsistence strategies or a greater use of the concepts of
resilience/sustainability among those who study subsistence strategies. However, at least for
climate, it is consistent with archaeological (e.g., [
134
]) and modern [
135
] understanding that
agricultural productivity and the environment act as the mediating factor between climate
and society. Further support for these links can be seen in Figure 4, where climate (both as a
keyword and stressor), subsistence strategies, and subsistence evidence (zoo-archaeology and
seeds) follow similar patterns over time. The need to manage other natural resources is also
reflected in the results. Climate change, other environmental factors (e.g., erosion or floods)
and overexploitation can lead to a depletion of food (n= 16), water (n= 8), soil (n= 7) and
tree (n= 6) resources. These stressors are principally adapted to via resource management, for
example of water infrastructure (n= 17), soils (n= 5), and wild species (flora = 6; fauna = 4),
or by following resource availability, as reflected in the characteristics of moving settlements
(n= 11) and mobility (n= 3).
There are several conflicting findings between the identified resilient/sustainable
characteristics, which themselves provide significant insights. The first is between exist-
ing characteristics (e.g., economic or subsistence diversity, location, mobility, trade) and
responses (e.g., subsistence diversification and other adaptations, moving settlements,
increasing or reducing trade). For example, the geography of the Yucatán Peninsula
made coastal communities more resilient than others, because of their location they had
more dependable access to drinking water, increased agricultural productivity, and the
rivers/coastline provided easier access to trade, all of which increased their ability to
withstand droughts [
88
]. Existing characteristics are not always natural, however. At
Çadır Höyük, the low amount of intervention by the Hittite Empire preceding the broader
regional decline made adjusting to it easier as the community was already relatively self-
sufficient and autonomous [
52
]. On the other hand, in different circumstances similar
stressors required adaptations by the afflicted communities to survive. For example in
Tell el-
, Egypt, broader regional decline was adapted to by establishing new trading
relationships and collaborating with neighbouring settlements [
33
]. The success of both
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 16 of 24
existing characteristics and responses might be explained by varied definitions of resilience
and sustainability. Resilience is generally defined as the capacity of a system to retain
essential functioning under changing conditions, whereas sustainability is meeting the
needs of the present without compromising future needs. Resilience is therefore more
related to adaptation and can be interpreted both in the short- and long-term, whereas
sustainability is focused on long-term outcomes [16,98,99].
Another chronological conflict is between characteristics which promote resilience on
shorter timescales but are ultimately un-sustainable. In Mexico City, management of water
through construction of defences and direct interventions temporarily solved issues of
flooding. However, the same management ultimately led to more severe flooding once the
defences were overcome, or moved the floodwaters to other areas without defences [
56
]. A
second example of this is observed in Amazonia, where investment in and management of
raised fields was found to improve resilience to climatic shocks by retaining moisture, thus
improving agricultural productivity. Yet, on longer timescales, the raised fields lowered
the quality of the soil, which led to their abandonment [
46
]. Significant infrastructure
projects, such as Amazonian raised fields, require specific knowledge and organized
maintenance that can be difficult to maintain in periods of strife. Other examples of failed
large-scale water infrastructure resulting from a lack of expertise or management capacity
are found globally. In Crete, after the Minoan Period, dry periods were found to result
in water scarcity, followed by social unrest and economic decline, as communities did
not have the knowledge required to maintain and innovate upon the existing Minoan
water infrastructure [
76
]. Alternatively, in the Arabian Peninsula, water infrastructure was
abandoned when the large work forces required for maintenance and repair could not
be mobilised following the dissolution of states [
60
,
136
]. These examples emphasise the
unique value of archaeology in providing long-term perspectives on issues of resilience and
sustainability, which can be used to guide modern and future policy. This has been noted
many times previously (e.g., [
14
,
19
,
121
]), and in this special issue [
107
], but this potential
has not yet been fully actualised.
Comparison of the case studies reveals opposite characteristics which can promote
resilience/sustainability, dependent on the circumstances. For example, both collaborative
(interconnectivity (n= 6)/trade or trade increase (n= 4)/sharing resources (n= 2)) and
isolationist (self-sufficiency (n= 4)/trade embargo (n= 1)/isolation (n= 1)) strategies
are found to have enhanced resilience/sustainability in the case studies. This contrast
is exemplified in a network analysis of 24 communities/regions in the late pre-Hispanic
North American Southwest; this paper is also a prime example of quantification for better
comparison (discussed below). Having an external orientation in social relationships was
found to predict persistence through a prolonged drought; however, the Zuni region was
an exception, persisting despite isolation from the regional network. The study suggests
the Zuni persisted by having a high population and mobility that enabled them to follow
niches of productivity [
81
]. This indicates two important points: (1) there are multiple
possible methods for persisting through stressors, and (2) it is the combination of factors
that is ultimately more important for determining resilience/sustainability.
The significance of the interaction of factors has been stressed before and is best
explained by Carla Lancelotti [115]. In this paper, a framework for studying the resilience
of small-scale societies is provided with three resource domains (environmental, economic,
and social) and it is argued that the interactions between these domains may be more
important than the specifics of each individual factor. This ties into another problem in
studies of resilience to environmental changes. Whilst environmental determinism was
too extreme of a position, both baseline environmental conditions and the magnitude of
change can still be relevant for human impacts and perhaps the characteristics/strategies
that are most effective. This is illustrated in a paper focusing on community resilience
to volcanic eruptions in Costa Rica. Here, the frequency of eruptions in the region of the
Arenal volcano is suggested to have enhanced resilience by enabling the survival of local
knowledge between events [
86
]. The inverse is suggested in a recent study of climate
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 17 of 24
change impacts in southwest Anatolia, where the extended duration of drier conditions
resulted in a reduction of settlement and agricultural intensity. In this example, the local
population initially adapted following a shift to drier conditions but were eventually
overwhelmed by them. It may be that the endurance of the drier period, which had been
persisting for over a century, was more impactful. On the other hand, it may also have been
the result of a “perfect storm” of factors as threat of invasion, earthquakes and disease later
impacted the region simultaneously [
91
]. Likewise, a coalescence of factors was deemed
significant for the Barrilles chiefdoms in Costa Rica, where ongoing warfare undermined
their ability to adapt to a relatively low-magnitude volcanic eruption [86].
The paragraphs above all reflect the complexity of resilience and sustainability. To
unlock the full potential of case studies, coding of variables is required, as is a model or
framework that integrates these variables and their interactions. As has been highlighted
elsewhere, consistency in the coding of variables is crucial to enable quantitative cross-
comparisons of case studies; see examples discussing the value of this for sustainability
science by Michael E Smith [
109
,
131
]. The benefit of coding variables has been demon-
strated by statistical analyses of the SESHAT database to gain new insights, for example
assessment of climate change impacts on past societies by Peter Peregrine [
137
,
138
]. How-
ever, establishing methods for measuring different aspects of resilience/sustainability is a
significant challenge [
19
,
122
] and it is unclear what archaeological evidence can be used
to reflect core processes of societies [
17
]. This would necessitate archaeological projects
designed specifically around this outcome. Coding of variables would be particularly
valuable to enable modelling of socio-environmental systems at varied scales, especially
the longer timescales which archaeology is in a unique position to explore [
107
]. By doing
this, we can gain greater insights for modern and future resilience/sustainability.
Overall, whilst this initial quantification has identified some interesting patterns, a
more formally-produced catalogue of case studies should be produced. This would be a
collaborative effort between multiple parties, with different decisions made in selecting
relevant papers/case studies. For instance, refining definitions of categories—in this
example scale is only roughly defined and there is significant overlap due to the varying
size of countries. It may also be advantageous to develop separate frameworks for resilience
and sustainability, or to reframe them under the category of persistence. There may also be
a need to separate the frameworks by the external shock and/or the type of community, due
to the differing effects. For example, a framework examining the persistence of communities
under climate change might look rather different for a small-scale agricultural society when
compared to a group of hunter-gatherers, or a pre-industrial city and its hinterlands.
5. Summary and Conclusions
A total of 74 archaeological case studies of a community exhibiting resilience and/or
sustainability were identified using bibliometric searching methods. The number of case
studies was limited by a lack of books, discipline-specific journals, and non-English pa-
pers in WoS, as well as a disproportionate focus on negative narratives (i.e., collapse) in
archaeology. Additionally, many papers from the initial results were not suitable as they
merely identify a community that survived a particular shock, and then use resilience
as a post-hoc explanation, without establishing the evidence/characteristics behind this
supposed resilience.
Bibliometric analysis of the 74 case studies, as well as the key resilience/sustainability
theory (13 papers) and archaeological theory/summary (10 papers) datasets, revealed
an increase in publications per year over time. This is a highly collaborative discipline
(average of 4.2 authors per paper) but balkanised, with isolated groups researching one
region and/or methodology. Resilience and sustainability, as buzzwords, were topics
that 92.4% of authors only published on once; furthermore, 60% of papers did not have
any multi-paper authors. This is an overall negative for the concepts in archaeology, as
evidenced by a reliance on outdated ecological definitions and poor integration of the
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 18 of 24
concepts. The higher quality of later work by multi-paper authors suggests that to improve
research, more specialists in ancient resilience/sustainability are required.
Several aspects of the 74 case study papers were then quantified—scale, location,
period, stressor (i.e., why was resilience/sustainability required?), characteristic (i.e., how
were the community resilient/sustainable?) and evidence (used to claim resilient/sustainable
characteristic), to summarise and gain additional insight from previous research. The full
dataset can be found in Supplementary Table S1. There were many diverse stressors, char-
acteristics, and evidence types, but several occurred with high frequency. Climate was by
far the most prominent stressor (n= 40), as also reflected in the keyword analysis. Other
natural stressors included depletion/scarcity of various natural resources and extreme
events (e.g., floods and volcanic eruptions). Anthropogenic challenges were also present,
such as broader regional decline, separation from networks and demographic changes.
The high prevalence of both climate and natural resource deficiency were impactful on
the characteristics and evidence types. Subsistence adaptation was the most common re-
silient/sustainable characteristic (n= 35) and in many other case studies different solutions
were found to address subsistence deficiencies (n= 23). Other common characteristics
dealt with different resource deficiencies, such as water and wild resource management,
as well as moving to follow resource abundance. Evidence for agriculture, such as zoo-
archaeological and archaeobotanical (seeds, phytoliths) remains, was thus frequent, as were
water infrastructure and settlement patterns. Evidence types were overall more diverse
and often combined to reach conclusions. For instance, architecture and artefacts were
commonly used as supplementary evidence.
Perhaps more insightful than the characteristics themselves were the conflicts between
them. Firstly, some actions were found to be resilient in the short term but ultimately
unsustainable. Archaeology is unique in its ability to provide this longue durée perspec-
tive, which enables understanding of slower processes unobservable in a single human’s
lifetime [
107
], to policymakers so that these pitfalls can be avoided in the future. Secondly,
directly opposing characteristics were found to promote resilience/sustainability under
different circumstances. This stresses that there is no simple, universally successful policy;
there may be multiple strategies for overcoming the challenges of the future.
A more rigorous scientific methodology is required to access the as-yet untapped
potential of archaeological case studies of resilience/sustainability (as argued for previ-
ously in [
109
]). Formal comparative analysis between varied regions with high-quality
datasets is essential but will first require uniform methods for coding community variables
using archaeological evidence. Subsequently, a framework or model should be produced
that integrates these variables and, more importantly, their interactions with one-another,
building upon previous work [
115
]. This work is of the utmost importance because it
would enable the development of long-term policy tailored to the specific (environmental,
economic, and social) characteristics of individual communities.
Supplementary Materials:
The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https:
//www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/su142416591/s1, Table S1: Case Study Quantification.
Funding:
This research was funded by the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) as part of the “Global
Archaeology, Sustainable Archaeology and the Archaeology of Sustainability” scholarship program.
Data Availability Statement:
The data presented in this study are available in the Supplemen-
tary Materials.
Acknowledgments:
Thank you to Lisa Backhouse for providing vital feedback and guidance on
multiple drafts of this manuscript. There are many other researchers with whom discussions have
contributed greatly to my understanding of resilience/sustainability. For this, I would particularly
like to thank Nicki Whitehouse, Marco Madella, Martin Finné, Tamara Lewit, Felix Riede, Phil Riris,
and Michael E Smith. Finally, I would like to thank the three reviewers for their invaluable feedback.
Sustainability 2022,14, 16591 19 of 24
Conflicts of Interest:
The author declares no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design
of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or
in the decision to publish the results.
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... While studies of past resilience are plentiful, the concept has, until recently, been predominantly used as a framing device (14)(15)(16)(17) rather than a formal investigative framework [but see notable exceptions (7,18)]. In part, this rests in the conceptual and methodological diversity associated with the notion of resilience [c.f. ...
... This perspective aligns directly with the risk-management strategies to climatic change-and their archeological proxies-first identified by Halstead and O'Shea (27): (i) mobility, (ii) infrastructural investment (such as storage or irrigation facilities), (iii) economic adjustment (e.g., intensification or diversification of a group's subsistence base), and (iv) exchange (of goods and services in social and market networks). These four resilience strategies are repeatedly discussed in the archeological literature to explain how different behaviors could be favored over others given specific spatial and temporal patterns of environmental stress [see also (14,29,30)]. ...
... This framework was later translated into the language of resilience by Redman (26), thus linking it-terminologically at least-to resilience research in other disciplines. This enabled its application to a wide range of contexts, from hunter-gatherer societies to urban communities [for an overview, see (14,16)]. ...
Bad year econometrics: Agent-based modeling of risk management strategies under varying regimes of environmental change
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 2025
Resilience—the ability of socio-ecological systems to withstand and recover from shocks—is a key research and policy focus. Definitions of resilience differ between disciplines, however, and the term remains inadequately operationalized. Resilience is the outcome of variable behavioral decisions, yet the process itself and the strategies behind it have rarely been addressed quantitatively. We present an agent-based model integrating four common risk management strategies, observed in past and present societies. Model outcomes under different environmental regimes, and in relation to key case studies, provide a mapping between the efficacy (success in harm prevention) and efficiency (cost of harm prevention) of different behavioral strategies. This formalization unravels the historical contingency of dynamic socio-natural processes in the context of crises. In discriminating between successful and failed risk management strategies deployed in the past—the emergent outcome of which is resilience—we are better placed to understand and to some degree predict their utility in the contemporary world.
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... Although a comprehensive vegetation survey of the La Ciénega valley has not yet been conducted, preliminary estimates were made using Sentinel-2 multispectral imagery captured throughout the 2019 vegetation cycle. To reduce the effect of bare soil on the results, the Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) was applied instead of the standard NDVI (Huete, 1988), as SAVI is less sensitive to distortions caused by exposed ground. Multitemporal composites of these maps were created and compared with variations in shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands to identify regions with higher moisture content throughout the year. ...
... Structural visibility analysis revealed differing prominence between domestic and productive units in the landscape, with domestic units showing low visibility and a bimodal distribution, while productive units exhibited more uniform visibility than domestic areas. Normalized vegetation indices captured variations in plant vitality across different seasons, noting reduced activity in August compared to heightened vitality in April, influenced by moisture retention patterns throughout the year (Huete, 1988). These indices were pivotal in identifying potential pre-Hispanic agrarian sites, considering factors such as humidity, slopes, and sun exposure (Figure 9). ...
OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Archaeology of agriculture in the Cumbres Calchaquíes (Tucumán, Argentina): new insights into La Ciénega and Tafí Valleys during the first millennium CE
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 2025
This study examines the agricultural and ecological strategies of pre-Hispanic Andean communities, focusing on their innovative practices and land management techniques that fostered complex agrarian systems. It highlights early village settlements in northwestern Argentina, where households thrived for centuries by leveraging local knowledge deeply intertwined with rituals. The research reveals a flexible agricultural system that flourished in the studied valleys, supported by sophisticated social dynamics and advanced agrarian infrastructure. These communities adapted to challenges like uneven terrain, limited water access, and harsh high-altitude climates through a profound understanding of ecology and natural phenomena. The social structure, characterized by autonomous domestic units without centralized hierarchies, enabled e cient management of agricultural plots based on familial knowledge. This autonomy also facilitated coordinated activities like herding and post-harvest maintenance, ultimately enhancing agricultural productivity. The article concludes by emphasizing that applying ancient practices to contemporary sustainability challenges requires a deep understanding of specific cultural and environmental contexts. Rather than relying on generic solutions, it is essential to clearly define and thoroughly study these contexts to ensure their e ectiveness and relevance.
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... These examples demonstrate that to understand rapid short-term societal change we also need to analyze processes on longer timescales, both in the societal and natural realms. In fact, the ability of archeology and history to view things as part of a longue durée is perhaps their greatest potential for informing modern policy discussions (Jacobson, 2022;Silva et al., 2022). ...
... Additionally, this degree of rigor is rarely given to other explanations of societal change; for example, Roman technological innovation is frequently assumed to cause settlement/population growth via enhanced agricultural productivity without ruling out all other factors and performing statistical chronological tests. The complexity of societal change means it is rarely mono-causal; countless examples now suggest the convalescence of multiple factors is more important for large-scale societal change (Jacobson, 2022;Weiberg and Finné, 2022). ...
Holocene hydroclimate synthesis of the Aegean: Diverging patterns, dry periods and implications for climate-society interactions
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2024
  • HOLOCENE
The Aegean region has a wealth of archeological data originating from a long and rich human history and is frequently used as a testbed for climate-society interactions at different time scales. Here, we summarize and synthesize 31 proxy records derived from lake and wetland sediments, marine sediments, and speleothems reflecting hydroclimatic conditions over the last 10,000 years in the Aegean. To enable comparison and numerical analyses, we convert each record into z-scores and average values into centurial and decadal bins. The long-term hydroclimatic trajectory is best described by individual trends in three sub-regions that periodically converge and diverge. The results from our analyses highlight the complex long-and short-term spatio-temporal patterns of the hydroclimate with periods of wetter and drier conditions. Statistical analyses of the last 3500 years, the most data-rich period, corroborate the complex climate picture. Three periods that appear dry in the regional averages, at 7250-6650 BP, 3350-2750 BP, and 1200-700 BP, highlight spatio-temporal variability and underpin the importance of local data when comparing hydroclimate data with archeological information. Considering the complexities and uncertainties in hydroclimate records, we advocate for careful consideration when utilizing these in studies of climate-society interactions, including transparency regarding their uncertainties and the relevance of each record to a respective archeological site. We have produced a freely available, simplified dataset that can be used by those interested in studying the region, as well as maps displaying climatic conditions during each century.
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... Studies on the latter include examples of significant anthropogenically driven regional changes to the nitrogen cycle due to deforestation, agricultural intensification and other land use management practices long before the Industrial Era with long-term consequences for both freshwater (Guiry et al. 2020) and terrestrial environments (Guiry et al. 2018). Additionally, archaeologically informed long-term studies of human-environment interactions have a key role to play in identifying land and resource use strategies that have proved to be ecologically sustainable over hundreds of years (Brewington et al. 2015;Jacobson 2022), examples of where and when human activities have enhanced regional biodiversity over the long term (Roberts et al. 2017) and how human communities have 'weathered' severe climate change in the past although much remains to be done in refining these approaches (Petek-Sargeant and Lane 2021; Rivera-Collazo 2022). ...
Exploring the Interface Between Planetary Boundaries and Palaeoecology
Article
Full-text available
The concepts of planetary boundaries are influential in the sustainability literature and assist in delineating the ‘safe operating spaces’ beyond which critical Earth system processes could collapse. Moving away from our current trajectory towards ‘hothouse Earth’ will require knowledge of how Earth systems have varied throughout the Holocene, and whether and how far we have deviated from past ranges of variability. Such information can inform decisions about where change could be resisted, accepted or where adaptation is inevitable. The need for information on long‐term (Holocene) change provides an interface for palaeoecology and sustainability that remains underexploited. In this position paper, we explore this interface, first discussing the need for long‐term perspectives and introducing examples where palaeoecology has been used in defining safe operating spaces and constraining limits of acceptable change. We describe advances in quantitative methods for analysis of time‐series data that strengthen the contribution of palaeoecology to the concepts of planetary boundaries and safe operating spaces. We consider the importance of issues of scaling from landscape to regional and global scales in operationalising planetary boundaries concepts. We distil principles for this field of research going forward and introduce three case studies which will form the basis of research on these topics.
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... [emphasis added] (Redman and Kinzig, 2003: 5). In its wide usage, the term resilience has come to refer to a number of loosely related processes, with debate over its meaning and application to ecosystems and social systems (Jacobson, 2022;Peeples et al., 2006;Rashidian, 2021;Van Meerbeek et al., 2021). It is not our aim to review or critique this large and varied literature. ...
Lessons for an invisible future from an invisible past: Risk and resilience in deep time
Article
  • Jul 2024
The interrelated concepts of risk and resilience are inherently future-focused. Two main dimensions of risk are the probability that a harmful event will happen in the future and the probability that such an event will cause a varying degree of loss. Resilience likewise refers to the organization of a biological, societal, or technological system such that it can withstand deleterious consequences of future risks. Although both risk and resilience pertain to the future, they are assessed by looking to the past – the past occurrence of harmful events, the losses incurred in these events, and the success or failure of systems to mitigate loss when these events occur. Most common risk and resilience measures rely on records extending a few decades into the past at most. However, much longer-term dynamics of risk and resilience are of equal if not greater importance for the sustainability of coupled socioecological systems which dominate our planet. Historical sciences, including archeology, are critical to assessing risk and resilience in deep time to plan for a sustainable future. The challenge is that both past and future are invisible; we can directly observe neither. We present examples from recent archeological research that provide insights into prehistoric risk and resilience to illustrate how archeology can meet this challenge through large-scale meta-analyses, data science, and modeling.
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... The current entanglement of regional climate change and local environmental degradation driven by the impact of land-use practices does not mark the first time when such conditions have necessitated considerations of reorganization of productive land use. The deep-time nature of archaeological datasets provides a unique opportunity to contribute to the discussion on the nature of sustainability of land-use practices in the context of environmental change and pressures such as reduced water availability and aridification, loss of topsoil and erosion, and shifting growing seasons (Jacobson, 2022;Silva et al., 2022). This paper aims to contribute to this special issue dedicated to resilience and sustainability in socio-ecological systems by presenting a method for reconstructing past cropland for examining the reciprocally influential relationship between environmental change and human land-use behaviour in a mountainous Eastern Mediterranean agriculturally productive landscape. ...
Changing with the times: From agricultural potential to spatially explicit reconstructions of past land use
Article
Full-text available
  • Jul 2024
Past land-use reconstructions are a key tool for studying long-term human ecodynamics and addressing pressing questions about the origins and evolutionary dynamics of the Anthropocene. In particular, agricultural landcover reconstructions are vital for understanding long-term human-environment dynamics. Most past agricultural land-use models, however, rely heavily on modelling assumptions, make limited use of known archaeological site locations to constrain or inform their estimates and tend to be limited to general estimates of percentages of plant types within catchments around pollen trapping lakes. The lack of information outside catchment areas and low spatial resolution even within catchments constrain the utility of these models. To address this problem, we propose a new approach that combines archaeological predictive modelling with pollen-based agricultural landcover reconstructions to produce more accurate, spatially explicit past landcover estimates. Here, we present the results of a case study deploying the new approach to produce improved past landcover maps for a region in the Western Taurus Mountains, southwestern Turkey. The study area surrounds Sagalassos, an antique urban centre with a regional settlement history encompassing nine millennia. We produced five archaeological predictive models for the study region using the ‘Locally Adaptive Models of Archaeological Potential’ (LAMAP) method spanning the Hellenistic through Late Ottoman period. We then combined those predictive surfaces with ‘Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites’ (REVEALS) pollen landcover reconstructions for the same periods based on pollen from sediment cores extracted from three catchments within the study area. Lastly, we compared the resulting hybrid landcover models to the archaeological record using data not used to make the predictions. We found that the hybrid landcover model aligned very well with the known extents of agricultural land-use from the study area. These results indicate that the proposed approach is a viable way to combine pollen-based landcover models with archaeological data and produce more accurate, empirically-based landcover reconstructions reflecting real human activity in the past.
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The Climatic Resilience of the Sasanian Empire
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 2025
  • HUM ECOL
The Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE) has been given relatively little attention in research on climate-society interactions when compared to the neighboring Byzantine Empire, despite evidence of changing conditions and an agricultural economy that is theoretically vulnerable to droughts due to low annual precipitation. We review the available historical, archaeological, paleo-environmental, and paleo-climatic evidence to assess whether climatic conditions factored into periods of Sasanian growth and decline. We find evidence for drier conditions across Sasanian territories at the turn of the sixth century, a pattern that extends to the Aegean, Anatolia, and Central Asia. These same conditions contributed to a significant decline for the nearby Kingdom of Himyar but occurred alongside a period of expansion and intensification for the Sasanian Empire. We suggest that a combination of careful management of water infrastructure, including qanats, which can conserve water resources during dry periods, and land-use strategies that are both diverse and flexible, may have mitigated the worst impacts of this dry period. However, we note several weaknesses in the available data that still hinder confident interpretations of the potential impacts of climate change in the Sasanian Empire. Notably, there are gaps in the coverage of paleo-hydrological records and a complete lack of terrestrial paleo-temperature records in the region, as well as low resolution and high chronological uncertainties in the archaeological and paleo-environmental evidence.
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Towards a Model for Sociocultural Transformation: Anthropocentric Approaches to Resilience, Collapse, and Resistance
Article
Full-text available
  • Dec 2023
When studying ancient societies, it is inevitable that eventually the theme of social collapse will arise. Archaeology has long been concerned with the theme of resilience, collapse, and resistance, triggered by either external factors such as conquest and natural disasters, or from internal factors such as environmental mismanagement, political or economic calamity, or sociocultural revolutions. Most approaches to the themes of resilience, collapse, and resistance have primarily relied on socioecological models that results in binarized explications of the archaeological record, framing evidence in competing terms of collapse and resilience: either societies endured collapse through a series of choices that resulted in either failure or success on the one hand or that societies overcame problems and exhibited resilience by adapting to new pressures or moving to new environments on the other hand. This paper seeks to explore concepts of resilience, collapse, and resistance through an anthropocentric rather than ecocentric perspective, touching on the theories used to construct the ideas of collapse, resilience, and resistance, with a particular focus on sociocultural aspects. Finally, this paper suggests a model which centers on the notion of sociocultural transformation, enculturation and hybridity placed into direct dialogue with resilience, collapse, and resistance.
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Introduction: Community Resilience in Ancient Egypt
Article
Full-text available
  • Dec 2023
This special thematic issue focusses on Community Resilience in Ancient Egypt. Although the subject of resilience has only re-entered the disciplines of the archaeology and history of Northeastern Africa and Western Asia in recent years, its aspects have been explored for several decades via the concept of collapse. This dossier pushes past collapse to consider the changing continuities of communities across different periods of Egypt’s history. Bringing together diverse perspectives from climate change to communities of practice, it aims to spur further discussions and research into the various strategies of adaptation and resilience initiated and experienced by communities of Egypt’s past.
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How can Research on Past Urban Adaptations be Made Useful for Sustainability Science?
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 2023
Non-technical summary Cities in the distant past – as documented by archaeologists and historians – provide an extensive record of urban successes and failures, yet this information has had little impact on the field of sustainability science. I explore two reasons for this situation. First, these scholars have often failed to synthesize their data scientifically, and, second, they have not approached the transfer of past knowledge to present research in a rigorous manner. I organize discussion of these issues around three arguments for the present value of past cities: the urban trajectory argument, the sample size argument, and the laboratory argument. Technical summary I explore the different ways historical and archaeological data can be deployed to contribute to research on urban sustainability science, emphasizing issues of argumentation and epistemology. I organize the discussion around three types of argument. The urban trajectory argument exploits the long time series of early cities and urban regions to examine change at a long time scale. The sample size argument views the role of early cities as adding to the known sample of settlements to increase understanding of urban similarities and differences. The laboratory argument uses data from past cities to explicitly test models derived from contemporary cities. Each argument is examined for three contrasting epistemological approaches: heuristic analogs, case studies, and quantitative studies. These approaches form a continuum leading from lesser to greater scientific rigor and from qualitative to quantitative frameworks. Much past-to-present argumentation requires inductive logic, also called reasoning by analogy. Sustainability scientists have confused this general form of argument with its weakest version, known as heuristic analogs. I stress ways to improve methods of argumentation, particularly by moving research along the continuum from weaker to stronger arguments. Social media summary Better methods of argument allow the past record of urban success and failure to contribute to urban sustainability science.
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Human-environment dynamics in the ancient Mediterranean. Keywords of a research field
Article
Full-text available
  • Nov 2022
Human-environment dynamics in past societies has been a major field of research in the Mediterranean for a long time, but has grown significantly following the increase in the number and quality of palaeoclimate and palaeoenvironmental records in the last two decades. Here we sketch the outline of this field of research based on 1,531 author keywords from 280 peer-reviewed articles published in 78 different scientific journals during 2016–2021. Sourced from the Web of Science, the selected studies cover the time span from the Neolithic to the Roman period across the Mediterranean and provide a large number of entry points for the interested reader regardless of their prior knowledge and specific interests. The results make evident the breadth and interdisciplinary nature of this research and show that it is possible to approach questions of humanenvironment dynamics in many and diverse ways. Among other things, our overview outlines the importance of temporal and spatial scales, as well as the elusive nature of causality, and highlights that monocausal models connecting climate events and societal collapse are increasingly replaced by scenarios favouring more nuanced renditions of the sequence of events within which internal societal factors are given more room for play.
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Agricultural Resilience during the 6 th Century Crisis: Exploring Strategies and Adaptations Using Plant-Macrofossil Data from Hove-Sørbø and Forsandmoen in Southwestern Norway
Article
Full-text available
  • Jun 2022
  • Norweg Archaeol Rev
Major changes in the archaeological material in Rogaland, southwestern Norway, from the mid-6th century AD have been interpreted as a population decline and an economic recession connected to the 6th century crisis. This event is known from historical and archaeological sources in continental Europe and has recently gained much attention in the Scandinavian archaeological debate. Sudden climate change, pandemic and collapsed trading networks likely induced new conditions, which would have had a major impact on the society in southwestern Norway. This paper uses plant-macrofossil data, supplemented by zooarchaeological data, and radiocarbon dates, from two archaeological sites with different prerequisites and trajectories, to reconstruct agricultural development. Based on this reconstruction, it explores agricultural resilience in connection with the 6th century crisis and investigates the merits of various agricultural strategies and adaptations. The macrofossil data reveals a change in crop composition, with a temporary introduction of rye at one of the sites, suggesting an adjustment to new circumstances. The studied sites display different subsistence strategies based on local conditions, and the data suggests complete abandonment of the site that probably depended on trade, while the people living at the more self-sufficient site were able to adapt their agriculture and survive the crisis.
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Developing Transdisciplinary Approaches to Sustainability Challenges: The Need to Model Socio-Environmental Systems in the Longue Durée
Article
Full-text available
  • Aug 2022
Human beings are an active component of every terrestrial ecosystem on Earth. Although our local impact on the evolution of these ecosystems has been undeniable and extensively documented, it remains unclear precisely how our activities are altering them, in part because ecosystems are dynamic systems structured by complex, non-linear feedback processes and cascading effects. We argue that it is only by studying human–environment interactions over timescales that greatly exceed the lifespan of any individual human (i.e., the deep past or longue durée), we can hope to fully understand such processes and their implications. In this article, we identify some of the key challenges faced in integrating long-term datasets with those of other areas of sustainability science, and suggest some useful ways forward. Specifically, we (a) highlight the potential of the historical sciences for sustainability science, (b) stress the need to integrate theoretical frameworks wherein humans are seen as inherently entangled with the environment, and (c) propose formal computational modelling as the ideal platform to overcome the challenges of transdisciplinary work across large, and multiple, geographical and temporal scales. Our goal is to provide a manifesto for an integrated scientific approach to the study of socio-ecological systems over the long term.
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Settlement, environment, and climate change in SW Anatolia: Dynamics of regional variation and the end of Antiquity
Article
Full-text available
This paper develops a regional dataset of change at 381 settlements for Lycia-Pamphylia in southwest Anatolia (Turkey) from volume 8 of the Tabula Imperii Byzantini–a compilation of historical toponyms and archaeological evidence. This region is rich in archaeological remains and high-quality paleo-climatic and -environmental archives. Our archaeological synthesis enables direct comparison of these datasets to discuss current hypotheses of climate impacts on historical societies. A Roman Climatic Optimum, characterized by warmer and wetter conditions, facilitating Roman expansion in the 1st-2nd centuries CE cannot be supported here, as Early Byzantine settlement did not benefit from enhanced precipitation in the 4th-6th centuries CE as often supposed. However, widespread settlement decline in a period with challenging archaeological chronologies (c. 550–650 CE) was likely caused by a “perfect storm” of environmental, climatic, seismic, pathogenic and socio-economic factors, though a shift to drier conditions from c. 460 CE appears to have preceded other factors by at least a century.
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Droughts and societal change: The environmental context for the emergence of Islam in late Antique Arabia
Article
Full-text available
  • Jun 2022
In Arabia, the first half of the sixth century CE was marked by the demise of Himyar, the dominant power in Arabia until 525 CE. Important social and political changes followed, which promoted the disintegration of the major Arabian polities. Here, we present hydroclimate records from around Southern Arabia, including a new high-resolution stalagmite record from northern Oman. These records clearly indicate unprecedented droughts during the sixth century CE, with the most severe aridity persisting between ~500 and 530 CE. We suggest that such droughts undermined the resilience of Himyar and thereby contributed to the societal changes from which Islam emerged.
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Social adaptive responses to a harsh and unpredictable environment: insights from a pre-Hispanic andean society
Article
Full-text available
  • Jun 2022
  • ECOL SOC
This paper articulates a case study of pre-Hispanic Andean communities with the evolutionary model of inequalities within agrarian societies. First, the detail and breadth of our field and air photogrammetric surveys allowed us to characterize the wealth inequalities and the social structure in agrarian communities of the arid Andes, from the household to the village and then the region. This first step in our work contributes to understandings of wealth distribution in the pre-Hispanic societies in the New World. By comparing our results with those in the existing literature—particularly the studies on the Puebloan societies—, we were able to extend the evolutionary model of social inequality for stable environments with defensible resources, to the case of unstable environments that lack defensible resources. This situation has been common throughout history and is still prevalent in many mountains, steppes, and desert areas that are sustainably populated despite fluctuating and often extreme conditions. This work represents a relevant contribution to the current debate on the connections between sustainability and social inequality in a context of increasing threats to natural resources and common goods. Key Words: Andean highlands / archaeology / food storage / Gini indices / settlement infrastructure / social inequality / sustainability
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Bucking the trend: Population resilience in a marginal environment
Article
Full-text available
Evaluating the impact of environmental changes on past societies is frequently confounded by the difficulty of establishing cause-and-effect at relevant scales of analysis. Commonly, paleoenvironmental records lack the temporal and spatial resolution to link them with historic events, yet there remains a tendency to correlate climate change and cultural transformations on the basis of their seeming synchronicity. Here, we challenge perceptions of societal vulnerability to past environmental change using an integrated paleoenvironmental and land-use history of a remote upland site in the north of Ireland. We present a high-resolution, multi-proxy record that illustrates extended occupation of this marginal locality throughout the climate oscillations of the last millennium. Importantly, historically-dated volcanic ash markers enable us to pinpoint precisely in our record the timing of major national demographic crises such as the Black Death and the European, Irish and Great (Potato) Famines. We find no evidence that climate downturns or demographic collapses had an enduring impact on the use of the uplands: either the community escaped the effects of these events, or population levels recovered rapidly enough (within a generation) to leave no appreciable mark on the palaeoenvironmental record. Our findings serve to illustrate the spatial complexity of human activity that can enable communities to withstand or quickly bounce back from largescale calamities. In neglecting to consider such local-scale variability in social and economic organization, generalized models of societal collapse risk overplaying the vulnerability of populations to long- and short-term ecological stressors to the detriment of identifying the social constraints that influence a population’s response to change.
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How can Research on Past Urban Adaptations be Made Useful for Sustainability Science?
Preprint
  • Aug 2022
I explore the different ways historical and archaeological data can be deployed to contribute to research on urban sustainability science, emphasizing issues of argumentation and epistemology. I organize the discussion around three types of argument. The urban trajectory argument exploits the long time series of early cities and urban regions to examine change at a long time scale. The sample size argument views the role of early cities as adding to the known sample of settlements to increase understanding of urban similarities and differences. The laboratory argument uses data from past cities to explicitly test models derived from contemporary cities. Each argument is examined for three contrasting epistemological approaches: heuristic analogs, focused case studies, and quantitative studies. These approaches form a continuum leading from lesser to greater scientific rigor and from qualitative to quantitative frameworks. Much past-present argumentation requires inductive logic, also called reasoning by analogy. Sustainability scientists have confused this general form of argument with its weakest version, known as heuristic analogs. I stress ways to improve methods of argumentation, particularly by moving research along the continuum from weaker to stronger arguments.
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