Long-term population resilience: an archaeological perspective

<p>This paper critically examines whether archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research on past population resilience has focused on analytically unsuitable questions and scales. It argues that the nature of the material record constrains the identification of resilient adaptations in the commonsense use of the term, particularly when studies privilege short-lived “pulse” disturbances such as catastrophic events. Instead, the paper advocates greater attention to long-term processes that better align with the temporal granularity of archaeological data. It further interrogates dominant theoretical frameworks derived from complex adaptive systems, highlighting their limited empirical operability, and contrasts them with ecological definitions of resilience grounded in measurable dynamics. The discussion introduces the distinction between resilience and robustness, suggesting that past socio-ecological systems may have favored heterogeneity and non-optimisation to mitigate risk, obviating the need for ‘resilience’ throughout the vast majority of human history. Ultimately, the paper is a call for recalibrating expectations, methods, and narratives to better capture long-term adaptive variability in human history.</p>