Resilience theory in archaeological practice - An annotated review

During the last decades, the importance of deriving analogies about current challenges, such as the mitigation of natural hazards, from archaeological case studies was frequently highlighted. In this context, Resilience Theory (RT) has become a potent tool to study socio-ecological systems and, thus, meet these public demands. RT facilitates how to conceptualise the interweaving of behavioural adaptations (e.g., mobility, economy, and social systems) with their external environmental setting. The Adaptive Cycle Model has emerged as a (if not the) key approach in using RT in empirical case studies and its application covers today the entire spatial and temporal field of prehistoric archaeology. However, several challenges remain for research in the future that are summarized in this paper, in particular the lack of a coherent terminology as well as the challenging task of defining the parameters of connectedness and potential are emphasized. Thereby, we show the current pitfalls for approaching the Adaptive Cycle Model and draft the future potential for developing more elaborated systems for classifying resilience in past societies. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.