Vulnerability, risk, resilience: an introduction

Western media headlines have for several decades been warning about the multiple risks to social, economic and political stability triggered by a variety of events of potentially calamitous proportions, from population ‘time-bombs’ to the mass extinction of insects. Social stability is not only at risk from inaction on global warming, but from hackers meddling in electoral processes (Bajak and Geller 2018), isolationism, populist uprising and violent protests challenging globalization and liberal democracies (Mounk 2018), as well as the risk to human rights from the rise of religious fundamentalism (Hegarty 2017). The popular science press is similarly apprehensive of the future: we are all ‘sleepwalking into disaster’ (Mulkern 2019) according to a recent Scientific American story. The lack of action on climate change risks increased aridization, loss of biodiversity and economic and social instability from the flooding of cities caused by rising sea levels. These may impact individuals and groups differently, with some becoming increasingly vulnerable to the negative social and economic consequences these outcomes of climate change may give rise to, while others may be better prepared to weather such transformations. We live in age in which our lack of resilience – our lack of capability to absorb disturbance – and thus heightened risk of collapse and vulnerability to a range of stressors is part of popular and academic discourse to such an extent that we appear to be living in an ‘age of fear’ (Easterbook 2018): multiple threats from multiple sources are detrimentally impacting our future comfort, peace and security, and things are only going to get worse. Is this, though, a product of short-term thinking that only focuses on the recent past and imagined future? Popularly promoted by Steven Pinker amongst others, is a counter-narrative of optimism: things are and will continue to get better. We are, according to Pinker (2018), apparently reaping the rewards of the Enlightenment and scientific rationalism, in which pollution, war and poverty are declining and health, wealth, women’s rights and universal human rights are better than they ever have been and are on a trajectory of further improvement. Whatever the merits of Pinker’s arguments, longer-term views of the kind he adopts show the value of focusing on trends rather than abnormal or infrequent events, and in so doing encourages us to examine trajectories of change in order to understand how earlier societies evaluated and managed risks, real or perceived, to their organizational and societal composition.

How did past societies manage risk, and what systems are resilient (or not) to different perturbations or impacts on the production and distribution of food, goods and energy, cycles of mass migration or immigration? Were some sections of past societies, or even entire societies, more vulnerable to socio-ecological risks than others, and, if so, how did such variation in vulnerability and capacity manifest archaeologically? The simplest but least satisfactory answers come from so-called ‘collapse archaeology’ in which the core focus is one of a lessons-learned (or morality tale) narrative, illustrating how a past society or polity overexploited and then overshot limitations of its productive systems, weathered internal and external stresses, and then transformed or collapsed under its own weight (Butzer and Endfield 2012). This is the narrative of the traditional study of collapse brought about from overexploitation, examples of which have been in circulation for over 60 years (Jacobsen and Adams 1958). Examples from which archaeologists have long drawn insight include the sequences of complex polities or empires across the ancient world from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica (Tainter 1990). The theme of overexploitation followed by decline has more recently re-emerged through best-seller publications such as Collapse (Diamond 2005), which, despite taking some liberties with the interpretation of the archaeological record, did much to show the value in looking to past societies as illustrative examples of what can happen if resources are not carefully managed and systems are allowed to overshoot (c.f., Motesharrei, Rivas and Kalnay 2014; Roman, Bullock and Brede 2017). Beyond providing popular-science examples of resource overexploitation or unsustainable economic practice leading to collapse, does archaeology have anything more to offer? The goal of this issue is to offer archaeological studies of risk, resilience and vulnerability that are more detailed and complex, and more theoretically nuanced than the otherwise simple narratives.

In fact, as this issue of WA shows, the archaeological contribution to risk, resilience and vulnerability studies is wide-ranging and informative and offers more than simple morality tales. Contributions range from the theoretical, in which the underlying concepts and definitions are interrogated and evaluated to ensure consistency in application and understanding, to detailed case studies that examine at high resolution the interplay of variables that can generate insight into the ways in which societies responded to change. For example, Brewer and Riede (this issue) take a longer-term, millennial-scale perspective on human–environmental interaction that not only provides context to current challenges, but also aspires to offer ‘practical insight, which can be developed into policy’. Integrating biological, socio-ecological and cultural evolutionary processes into an extended evolutionary synthesis (Laland et al. 2015; Fox, Pope, and Ellis 2017), they also address terminological confusion, and thus critically define central concepts such as ‘adaptation’ and ‘resilience’: the former relating to selection for traits in ancestral settings, the latter the ability to anticipate and adapt to future risks. The outcome of their contribution provides a more rigorous framework for understanding how cultural systems have managed past change, and may be capable of pre-empting future change. As one specific insight, they note the mismatch between economic (cultural) systems that select for exponential growth, and biological systems (which include food production) that eventually level to a maximum, or risk collapse. A long-term perspective, in which archaeology plays a central role, offers four benefits: (1) a sufficiently long time frame within which to observe and evaluate human–climate relationships; (2) an integrated conceptual framework for understanding adaptation and resilience; (3) terminological rigour; and (4) a database of how human societies have managed similar problems in the past, providing a pool of ideas from which current policy makers may take inspiration.

The idea that cultural heritage provides a repository of ideas that increases cultural resilience is a popular and compelling one (e.g. Plieninger and Bieling [2012]), and is explored in detail by Holtorf (this issue). In addition to acting as a source for reviving technological practices that may be more adaptive to particular environments than imported ideas, Holtorf also refers to the widespread belief that cultural heritage offers descendant communities a positive self-identity, a shared history and a tangible link to place which, in turn, provide resilience in the face of disturbance or disaster. The issue Holtorf raises to challenge this otherwise positive message is that strong cultural identity and links to place can fuel ethnic discord, and that ‘as social beings, our human identity should not be reduced to any single, tribal affiliation’ (Holtorf, this issue). Further, the protection of archaeological sites from destructive processes or events is not necessarily a social good: in fact, Holtorf maintains, the processes leading to deterioration or destruction of cultural heritage provide a source of knowledge about how things inevitably undergo change and transformation. In this sense, he argues, cultural heritage can be understood in much the same framework as that of landscapes, insofar as both phenomena are continuously changing. Holtorf’s conclusion is that by allowing cultural heritage to evolve similarly rather than remain fixed in a moment of time creates resilience in societies by normalizing change and encouraging adaptation.

Given that all cultural heritage is subject to change and transformation, yet may possess information that is of value to communities, how should the risk of information loss be calculated? When heritage is at risk, to what extent should it be the recipient of active conservation efforts at local, national or global scales? Western ideas of what constitutes value do not necessarily accord with those of Indigenous communities, and the differences between the two become pronounced in conservation archaeology when decisions on what to recover and record before physical destruction are immediate rather than academic. Michael O’Rourke (this issue) addresses different understandings of the heritage value of sites-at-risk from accelerated rates of coastal erosion in the Canadian Arctic. In this paper, he implements a value-based heritage management strategy using grounded visualization methods (Knigge and Cope 2006) to ascertain the different levels of value of importance to the local descendant community and thus inform conservation strategies. O’Rourke’s methods for evaluating site risk were multiscale and based on geomorphological processes including shoreline erosion, as well as place names that referenced dynamic landscapes. The combination of risk and value contributes in turn to a mapping of vulnerability as the product of these two measures, in which locations with both high risk and high value are deemed the most vulnerable. Field-based assessments provided additional knowledge for iterative development of the model, and generated a better understanding of the nature of risk, leading to nuanced understanding of the types of threats to and impacts on cultural heritage in the study region. The value of such an approach is that it embeds risk, value and vulnerability of archaeological sites within the knowledge systems of a descendent community and thus incorporates value judgements that do not necessarily align with those of Western academia.

The impact of climate change on different forms of social organization is informed by the work of Weiberg and Finné (this issue) and McLaughlin, Stoddart, and Malone (this issue) in two case studies that consider similar forms of stress impacting ancient Mediterranean societies. McLaughlin, Stoddart, and Malone deliberate the sources of risk and societal vulnerability in prehistoric Maltese society, ranging from fire, social isolation and erosion of their agricultural soils. In the period of interest, approximately 5800 to 2400 BP, there is considerable evidence of continuity, circumstantially suggesting cultural and economic adaptations to different forms of perturbations. While the specific mechanisms of resilience are challenging to identify archaeologically, according to these authors they are most clearly expressed in the evidence of continuity of ritual and monumental practices over several centuries. The hypothesized heterarchical nature of Copper Age society at this time is evoked as one such mechanism of resilience. In contrast, the hierarchical nature of Aegean Late Bronze Age society lacked resilience when climate change affected agricultural productivity. In their contribution, Weiberg and Finné propose that the evolution of Late Helladic palatial economies, characterized by increasing centralization and regional interconnectedness, was aided by wetter conditions from about 3450 BP (Finné et al. 2017). The onset of drier and more variable conditions, from approximately 3200 BP, begins prior to the destabilization of Mycenaean palatial economies at about 3150 BP and is thus implicated by association in the decline of economic and social power of the palaces (Finné et al. 2017). The trajectory of growth to this point had been one of increasing centralization, which Weiberg and Finné argue reduced societal capacity to manage perturbations in agricultural productivity. Conversely, the return to political simplification provided an ‘escape’ for formerly dependent communities and the opportunity to return to more sustainable productive systems. Although Weiberg and Finné acknowledge the links between climate and culture in the Late Bronze Age are correlative, the evidence they present is supportive of climate change amplifying regional sociopolitical change, and encourages further study at greater climatic and archaeological resolution, with more focused consideration of the relative vulnerability of different sections of Late Bronze Age communities (e.g. rural v. urban; elite v. commoners; herders v. farmers) to different social, ecological and political disturbances.

Hanna (this issue) offers a longer-term perspective on the ways in which societies adapt and change to differing social and environmental conditions. Integrating regional in- and out-migration events across the wider Caribbean, coupled with episodes of environmental change, enables him to fit archaeological patterns into the widely used concept of resilience theory and its constituent adaptive cycles (e.g. Holling and Gunderson [2002]). Hanna presents two episodes of cultural change as observed in ceramic and settlement patterns and interprets these as being consistent with a release from a conservation phase into an adaptive reorganization phase. Evidence of changing rainfall patterns and periods of aridity are highlighted as possible drivers, emphasizing the determinate nature of environmental change.

Of all the concepts explored in this issue, the concept of risk is, perhaps, the most ambiguous. On the one hand, risk is something to be guarded against, mitigated and assessed. Yet risk takers are also recognized as potential innovators and may, in the longer term, stand more to benefit from their actions than those whose outlook is more cautious. Various models of hunter-gatherer behaviour, drawing inspiration from evolutionary biology, have likewise long regarded human action as essentially oriented toward optimizing trade-offs between competing energy demands and resource exploitation strategies in terms of balancing degrees of risk against potential payoffs (Winterhalder 1986). Recent focus on the significance of care-giving as a means of reducing and responding to health risks (Spikins et al. 2018), has also raised the possibility that such practices may have provided particular evolutionary advantages to our species, as might other forms of apparently altruistic behaviour. In human behavioural ecology, ‘risk sensitivity specifies the susceptibility of an agent to unpredictable variance in outcomes’ (Fitzhugh 2001, 134). As Fitzhugh notes, all human agents engage with risk, although those who are more risk averse typically act in ways that reduce variance and thereby increase the predictability of outcomes, even if these may not maximize potential returns. ‘Risk-prone’ actors, as Fitzhugh describes them, conversely ‘choose to pursue solutions with higher variance on the odds that a higher than average payoff will result’. Key here is a notion of risk as variance, rather than probability of loss (Bleed and Bamforth 1997). While high variance may yield high returns in some instances, this does not always appear to be the case. The development of physical and social storage mechanisms as risk-buffering strategies (Testart 1982; Halstead and O’Shea 2004) aimed at mitigating climate-induced risks and reducing variance, for example, has often been considered to have been a key component of the transition to food production, although there is no inevitability about this.

Whereas risk can be either external or a quality of deliberate action, if not always recognized as such, vulnerability is typically seen to be a condition and often defined solely by external observers rather than agents themselves, in other words, essentially a state of susceptibility to harm. The vulnerability of communities in the past to environmental disasters, such as droughts and volcanic eruptions, and how they insured against these risks, have also become a major focus of archaeological research in recent decades (e.g. Cooper and Sheets [2012]; Ford et al. [2006]; Goldstein and Magilligan [2011]). Vulnerability is also highly relative – a vulnerable person, community, site, artefact, landscape, society and so forth is only ever vulnerable to a prescribed set of threats, which may even be neither understood nor perceived as such in some quarters. Recognizing this, and drawing on research perspectives about social equity, archaeologists are beginning to consider how variations in food availability, access, utilization and production stability influence degrees of household and community level vulnerability in terms of food security, and how these are also shaped by different understandings of entitlement (e.g. Spielmann et al. [2011]; Ekblom [2012]; Logan [2016]; Rivera-Collazo, Rodríguez-Franco, and Garay-Vázquez [2018]).

The environment, of course, is not the sole source of risk and opportunity: perturbations in economic patterns can put social systems under threat, as our recent experiences of modern global capital have acutely demonstrated. This was similarly true in the past, as Forsythe and colleagues (this issue) demonstrate with reference to the history of Irish salt production and its archaeological manifestation. By tracking the material and economic history of production, they illustrate the risks and different abilities of local entrepreneurs to navigate the complexity of fluctuations in markets and distribution networks over the course of three centuries from the late sixteenth century onwards. Sites such as Ballycastle in County Antrim, Dublin Bay, and other coastal locations may have been located on the geographical periphery of Europe, but they were nonetheless centres of considerable industry. By the mid-eighteenth century salt production was generating significant profits and had become an important source of tax revenues for the colony as well as a sizeable illicit trade, as entrepreneurs and smugglers alike took economic risks. By the early part of the nineteenth century, with the removal of duties and the salt tax, the industry was in decline and ultimately could not compete as other, more distant sources of supply grew in prominence, and the industry proved especially vulnerable to fluctuating prices, transportation challenges and the knock-on effects of wider social conflicts.

Archaeology, as the papers in this issue illustrate from different perspectives and at different spatial and temporal scales, is well suited to tracking the ebb and flow of economic, cultural and political success, the mix of internal and external anthropogenic and natural forces that can give shape to these trajectories, and their lasting material and ecological legacies. As highlighted here, such analyses caution against making overly simplistic generalizations about the main drivers of change or assumptions about the inevitability of over-exploitation of natural resources leading ultimately to collapse. They also demonstrate the critical importance of taking a longer-term perspective on contemporary problems and challenges, so as to differentiate genuine trends from more fleeting consequences of human action. It is encouraging, also, that there is an emerging consensus on the need for greater terminological rigour and clarity, a growing interest in applying archaeological knowledge to address present-day and potential future issues, and increased recognition of the limitations of archaeological knowledge in such endeavours. In all these developments, the temporal depth of archaeological data and their spatial diversity have long been considered the most important assets our discipline has to offer to the scholarly understanding of the interplay among risk, resilience and vulnerability in human societies. As the papers assembled here illustrate, both collectively and individually, the discipline is also well suited to providing fresh insights concerning the material expressions of these, the types of metrics that are needed to determine whether practices are sustainable, resilient or risky, and how the heritage of past forms of human–environment relations continue to haunt the present.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.