This is a very belated follow-up to a previous blog on the stress concept in biological anthropology. The utility of resilience in interpreting the archaeological record is under-rated as are the parallels of homeostasis and stress in human biology. I first became involved in studying resilience theory at UAF when I joined the RAP faculty. I presented some of this work in a seminar in Japan in 2009. After that and in a series of papers led by my archaeology colleague (Mark Hudson at NishiKyushu University Japan), we have explored resilience theory as a method of examining the archaeological record. We weren’t the first to think of this (here for a start). In the past two years, I have been looking at the parallels to concepts long used in biology, canalization and stress. The fundamental unit underlying these concepts is systemic integrity and external forces acting on that integrity. This concept appears across the academy with parallels in physics (surface tension), engineering, etc.
My interest is human biology from an evolutionary perspective (including the archaeological record). As biocultural beings, humans are shaped by biology and culture. When we look at evidence of physiological activity in the past, the context of those artifacts is key. Understanding when an organism is resistant to change (from external forces) while remaining internally coherent is, at the base of it, no different than understanding when a society is resistant to change while remaining internally coherent. Another way to understanding the competing forces of stability and change (in organisms or in society) is to look at how the system (biological or cultural) may adapt (or change, interpreted very loosely) in response to external forces. Adaptation is part of the resilience cycle. The difference between this and collapse is that the essential parts of the system (organismal or cultural) maintain integrity, as opposed to simply disappearing or being assimilated. More archaeological data are showing the persistence (in some capacity) of collapsed, dominated, or assimilated cultures (see here for some examples).
In modern societies, the system itself can be understood as well as the context; what cannot be understood is longitudinal change. Archaeological materials and their interpretation can provide the longitudinal data that measure system continuity (or lack thereof) after a period of prolonged or severe acute external stress; the challenge lies in reconstructing the system (and which components are essential). Combining these two datasets (contemporary and past) adds tremendous value to projections for the future–we get rich longitudinal data and rich system data, the combination of which provide a template for modelling future outcomes to responses to change.
Coming back to the biological parallel, we can use these sets of data to test resilience–was a population cultural resilient but biologically in decline or was a population experiencing improved biological conditions but cultural unstable. Since a key feature of modern resilience theory is both cultural and physiological well-being (again, defined broadly), a truly resilience system will show evidence of maintenance (or improvement) in both sectors. If we examine the data and find that a group shows cultural resilience but poor health or vice versa, were they truly resilient? Perhaps a better way to look at this is through the modified cycle of systems where resilience can be considered a reorganization. The moment (in archaeological time) when a system is experiencing external stress but maintaining culture and health is a precursor to the moment when the system is unsustainable and must reorganize. The maintenance of health and basic cultural values will persist even if the system appears to be dramatically changed. In some cases, the decline is too great and the system integrity is compromised and changes rather than adapts.
The Smell of Evolution 